6 ms·

The example characters expressed: 日、中、力 however are written the same way in both Chinese and Japanese from my understanding. (Albeit, I studied Japanese). The

by Navarr 12y ago

The example characters expressed: 日、中、力 however are written the same way in both Chinese and Japanese from my understanding. (Albeit, I studied Japanese). There are admittedly variations which should be done separately, however unification of visually identical glyphs is a "good thing" imho

frivoal 12y ago
I'm fluent in Japanese and speak some Mandarin Chinese as well. These 3 characters are identical, not similar. For a different example, 国 and 國 used to be the same character, but China and Japan (left) have both diverged the traditional form still used in Taiwan (right). Unicode treats them as separate. 今 Looks slightly different in traditional Chinese vs other languages. In traditional Chinese, the little straight line between the two angled lines is sloped, while it is horizontal in simplified Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Any reader of any of these languages would have no issue if the variant they are used to was replaced by the other one. They might think you have a sloppy handwriting or an ugly font if they even notice, but that's about it. Unicode treats them as the same.
- toufka 12y ago
  This seems again to be a perfect place for rendering rather than encoding. The english letter 'a' can be rendered as a ring with a tail (the way I handwrite), or a ring with a cap and a tail (the way the font usually renders). Both are the same letter, if rendered differently based on my (contextually sensitive) font.
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    I think not. I do want to be able to say both People's Republic of China 中华人民共和国 and Republic of China 中華民國 in the same text, and if I had to choose rendering either 国+华 or 國+華 then it wouldn't work.
    - toufka 12y ago
      Curious, as I'm not sure when that would actually happen in real life (in Chinese). Generally in mainland China , the ROC would always be rendered with 国, even officially [1]. And in Taiwan the PRC would be rendered with 國 [2]. It gets a bit weirder in Japanese where the word is distinctly not the same - one is a traditional version (proper noun) of the other and you could imagine a text using both (William vs Wilhelm vs Will). [1] http://baike.baidu.com/view/2200.htm http://baike.baidu.com/view/2200.htm [2] https://www.google.com.tw/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1 https://www.google.com.tw/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E...
      - ptaipale 12y ago
        That is true, mainland China writes "中华民国". But I still do want to be able to write texts that are like this discussion: mainly in English, but contain fragments in Chinese, and so that I can use both the traditional and simplified characters. And it also makes total sense to me that 日本 is Japan, both in Japanese and Chinese, using the exact same Unicode characters.
        Navarr 12y ago
        If it's up to font rendering, you would specify the language tag for each of those individually which would render the appropriate font (as you are writing that country's name in its language). Though that's far more difficult for the laman, and markdown certainly doesn't seem to have any language markers.
  - zhemao 12y ago
    Except you can still recognize the 'a' as 'a' no matter which way it is rendered. Not so with Chinese characters. For instance, the character for "fly" in simplified (飞) and traditional (飛) look very different. Someone who only learned simplified may not recognize the traditional character as being the same.
    - kijin 12y ago
      Which is exactly why 飞 and 飛 are encoded separately. I don't see any problem with that.
      - zhemao 12y ago
        Yes, but other characters that also look different are merged. Here's an example: http://www.tofugu.com/2012/04/04/the-sorry-state-of-japanese-on-the-internet/ http://www.tofugu.com/2012/04/04/the-sorry-state-of-japanese... That's the character for "cold". If you showed me (a Chinese speaker) the Japanese or Korean variant, I would have no idea what it meant.
        snogglethorpe 12y ago
        As far as I can see, Unicode has mostly settled down into a sort of "good enough" state: characters that have sufficiently different renderings have gotten separate "variant" codepoints for each rendering, while characters that are very similar (even if not completely identical as commonly written) are still only present as unified codepoints. I've no idea if these variant codepoints are actually supposed to show up in user files, or are intended mainly for the use of font rendering systems, etc... the whole thing seems a bit of a mess, even if the information is technically present. Judging from unicode.com, "冷" does seem have separate codepoints: 冷 (chinese/unified), and 冷 (japanese z-variant). However my browser renders both as similar characters. Similarly, on my phone, the same character gets input whether using a Chinese or a Japanese input method, and both get rendered using the Japanese rendering (it's a Japanese phone) which makes Chinese text look a little funny. An interesting example is "晩" / "晚", which has one more stroke in the Japanese variant, but it's situated in a location which makes both variants look pretty much identical (and in small bitmapped fonts, they are identical). Nonetheless, Unicode includes codepoints for both...

by Navarr 12y ago

frivoal 12y ago

I'm fluent in Japanese and speak some Mandarin Chinese as well. These 3 characters are identical, not similar. For a different example, 国 and 國 used to be the same character, but China and Japan (left) have both diverged the traditional form still used in Taiwan (right). Unicode treats them as separate. 今 Looks slightly different in traditional Chinese vs other languages. In traditional Chinese, the little straight line between the two angled lines is sloped, while it is horizontal in simplified Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Any reader of any of these languages would have no issue if the variant they are used to was replaced by the other one. They might think you have a sloppy handwriting or an ugly font if they even notice, but that's about it. Unicode treats them as the same.

toufka 12y ago
This seems again to be a perfect place for rendering rather than encoding. The english letter 'a' can be rendered as a ring with a tail (the way I handwrite), or a ring with a cap and a tail (the way the font usually renders). Both are the same letter, if rendered differently based on my (contextually sensitive) font.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  I think not. I do want to be able to say both People's Republic of China 中华人民共和国 and Republic of China 中華民國 in the same text, and if I had to choose rendering either 国+华 or 國+華 then it wouldn't work.
  - toufka 12y ago
    Curious, as I'm not sure when that would actually happen in real life (in Chinese). Generally in mainland China , the ROC would always be rendered with 国, even officially [1]. And in Taiwan the PRC would be rendered with 國 [2]. It gets a bit weirder in Japanese where the word is distinctly not the same - one is a traditional version (proper noun) of the other and you could imagine a text using both (William vs Wilhelm vs Will). [1] http://baike.baidu.com/view/2200.htm http://baike.baidu.com/view/2200.htm [2] https://www.google.com.tw/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1 https://www.google.com.tw/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E...
    - ptaipale 12y ago
      That is true, mainland China writes "中华民国". But I still do want to be able to write texts that are like this discussion: mainly in English, but contain fragments in Chinese, and so that I can use both the traditional and simplified characters. And it also makes total sense to me that 日本 is Japan, both in Japanese and Chinese, using the exact same Unicode characters.
      - Navarr 12y ago
        If it's up to font rendering, you would specify the language tag for each of those individually which would render the appropriate font (as you are writing that country's name in its language). Though that's far more difficult for the laman, and markdown certainly doesn't seem to have any language markers.
- zhemao 12y ago
  Except you can still recognize the 'a' as 'a' no matter which way it is rendered. Not so with Chinese characters. For instance, the character for "fly" in simplified (飞) and traditional (飛) look very different. Someone who only learned simplified may not recognize the traditional character as being the same.
  - kijin 12y ago
    Which is exactly why 飞 and 飛 are encoded separately. I don't see any problem with that.
    - zhemao 12y ago
      Yes, but other characters that also look different are merged. Here's an example: http://www.tofugu.com/2012/04/04/the-sorry-state-of-japanese-on-the-internet/ http://www.tofugu.com/2012/04/04/the-sorry-state-of-japanese... That's the character for "cold". If you showed me (a Chinese speaker) the Japanese or Korean variant, I would have no idea what it meant.
      - snogglethorpe 12y ago
        As far as I can see, Unicode has mostly settled down into a sort of "good enough" state: characters that have sufficiently different renderings have gotten separate "variant" codepoints for each rendering, while characters that are very similar (even if not completely identical as commonly written) are still only present as unified codepoints. I've no idea if these variant codepoints are actually supposed to show up in user files, or are intended mainly for the use of font rendering systems, etc... the whole thing seems a bit of a mess, even if the information is technically present. Judging from unicode.com, "冷" does seem have separate codepoints: 冷 (chinese/unified), and 冷 (japanese z-variant). However my browser renders both as similar characters. Similarly, on my phone, the same character gets input whether using a Chinese or a Japanese input method, and both get rendered using the Japanese rendering (it's a Japanese phone) which makes Chinese text look a little funny. An interesting example is "晩" / "晚", which has one more stroke in the Japanese variant, but it's situated in a location which makes both variants look pretty much identical (and in small bitmapped fonts, they are identical). Nonetheless, Unicode includes codepoints for both...