Hunting Rare Glyphs

A discussion of the peculiarities of languages and the differences between them.
yurifink
Junior Lexiterian
Posts: 56
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2005 10:26 am
Location: Ashdod, Israel

Hunting Rare Glyphs

Postby yurifink » Mon Jun 20, 2005 4:20 pm

I have confronted a problem. Typing a page of a Chinese dictionary in a Microsoft Word file, I've discovered that some Chinese characters are difficult to find and to transfer via the clipboard.

Example: , which creates a word of Middle-Chinese bòhuà = to administer. To make this glyph you must take : 'knife' 刂 as the right part and 'page' 頁 without its feet as the left part.

I'll be thankful if somebody being more experienced tells me how to solve problems like this.

Regards
Nothing must be done hastily but killing of fleas

anders
Lexiterian
Posts: 405
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:46 am
Location: Sweden

Postby anders » Tue Jun 21, 2005 1:35 pm

The two best hunting grounds I've found for obscure glyphs are

1) The Mojikyo font. It's free. Your glyph isn't in it - but I find one with a right-hand knife and "100" to the left! It is listed in the Xinhua Zidian. My large dictionary tells me that this bai is dialectal, and it + 划 means "arrange, deal with".

Compare, for example, the spellings Li Po - Li Bo - Li Bai...

If the glyph is the way you describe it, Mojikyo offers to create it and include it in their font, if you tell them where you found it!

2) You'll find the 100+knife here as well.

Now, if you just want to relax with assorted strange characters, try this page. You'll find a link for downloading Mojikyo there as well.

Wikipedia:
Mojikyo (文字鏡) is a set of computer software and fonts for enhanced ideogram word-processing. As of October 2002, it collected 126,560/142,228 characters (CD-ROM/WWW version). Among them, 101,936/128,573 characters belong to the extended CJK family [1] (http://www.mojikyo.com/info/about/index.html). Many of the characters are obsolete and not included in the Unicode.

Happy hunting! I'll try to mail you a pfd file with more illustrations.
Irren ist männlich

yurifink
Junior Lexiterian
Posts: 56
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2005 10:26 am
Location: Ashdod, Israel

Postby yurifink » Wed Jun 22, 2005 3:55 am

Thank you, Anders, for your detailed explanation.
Mojikyo is a remarkable programme but, alas! its system requirements (Pentium II) exceed possibilities of my comp. And I doubt that it's possible to convert its glyphs into fonts like PMingLiu (and this is a condition to the project partakers).
As to the Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants, it offers, as I see, in some cases image format instead of real glyphs.
And what is worse, I cannot define whether a font like PMingLiu contains or doesn't contain a character I want.

Regards.
Nothing must be done hastily but killing of fleas

anders
Lexiterian
Posts: 405
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:46 am
Location: Sweden

Postby anders » Wed Jun 22, 2005 8:15 am

Unfortunately, you're right: Mojikyo glyphs can't be converted for document use. I think they can be linked to for websites, but that's beyond me.

The "variants" site uses lots of images, yes.

One possibility might be to use Acrobat to create pdf files. It works for "variants" images copied to a document, Mojikyo glyphs, Equation Editor formulae and just about anything that you manage to include in the document. You'll have to get the full Acrobat, though, which is not exactly free, but it's a nice tool, and you can print the pages, and people can read the files using the free Acrobat reader.

Long ago, before IMEs, I somehow managed to create a list of all the MS Song glyphs in MS Word format. The font is arranged according to radicals + number of strokes, so it is possible (but of course tedious) to browse it. I don't remember how I did it, but I think that I modified a macro included with Word to print all characters in a font. I'm pressed for time this month, but it would be an interesting project to try to repeat the process for PmingLiu...
Irren ist männlich

yurifink
Junior Lexiterian
Posts: 56
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2005 10:26 am
Location: Ashdod, Israel

Postby yurifink » Thu Jun 23, 2005 10:20 am

Long ago, before IMEs, I somehow managed to create a list of all the MS Song glyphs in MS Word format.
Maybe it would be a very useful software but of course it must be equipped with a radical search facility like one in dictionaries. I installed NJStar Chinese WP and it's a handy tool but how to compare its font set and sets like PMingLiU?

Regards.
Nothing must be done hastily but killing of fleas


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