Re: [tlug] Re: Unicode (Was: apache2...)

[Stephen Lee <sl@example.com>]

simon colston <simon@example.com> wrote:
> Jim Breen <jwb@example.com> wrote:
> 
> > You can only go so far addressing irrationality. With people saying that
> > a 十 (kanji) can't be unified with a 十 (hanzi) because
> > one is essentially Japanese and the other irrevocably Chinese, no
> > addressing is possible, short of abandoning the whole process. 
> 
> But surely combining these two as being "the same" handicaps expression. 

In this case the characters are "the same", as in having the same origin
and meaning, so your argument is moot.

I think what Dr. Breen is saying is that somebody took the kanji from a
Japanese text (which happens to be coded in a Japanese character set
like EUC-JP), and the hanzi from a Chinese text (coded in, say, BIG5)
and say they are different characters.  Replace the character with say
'a' and substitute 'Japanese'->'English', 'EUC-JP'->'ASCII',
'Chinese'->'Russian', 'BIG5'->'koi8' and you can see this argument holds
no water.

It is probable that there is a kanji that looks similar to a hanzi but
which has different meaning/origin (i.e. is a different character),
probably from the two simplification efforts in Japan/Mainland China. 
But those characters would have different code points in Unicode.

Stephen