Ar 09:02 +0900 1999-02-19, scríobh Mark Penner:
>I don't have English MS Word. My Japanese version does everything the
>English one does, plus Japanese, so I really have no use for it. All that
>to say, no, I don't know. But I think I remember hearing that the
>character set on roman alphabet programs are 8 bit, and have 256 slots
>total for a font set, whereas Japanese/Chinese are 16 bit, and have
>________ (very big number) slots.
I would really think twice about doing TOO much work developing for a
double-byte version of Word, because as the Universal Character Set (UCS)
is implemented more and more widely, ordinary software will handle 16-bit
representations.
I have been involved in encoding scripts in the UCS for several years, and
have engaged in some preliminary proposals, for instance, for Blissymbols
(a graphic language with no standard pronunciation), and Egyptian
Hieroglyphs. See my index for links to those documents. I've engaged in
preliminary discussions with Valerie about this, and it looks as though
SignWriting will be encodable -- though I'm looking forward to seeing some
more materials on SignWriting which Valerie has said she'll be forwarding
to me.
In the meantime, I do commend to technically-minded folks my papers on
Bliss and Hieroglyphs (the latter is very large, a 3.4MB PDF file) because
we will want to have some architectureal discussions regarding how
SignWriting is currently encoded and how we will represent it in the UCS.
--
Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta ** https://www.indigo.ie/egt
15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire/Ireland
Guthán: +353 1 478-2597 ** Facsa: +353 1 478-2597 (by arrangement)
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn; Baile an Bhóthair; Co. Átha Cliath; Éire
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