Subject: Chinese Indexing

From: zhang qing <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 May 90 16:40:46 PDT

I support the idea of indexing Chinese using pinyin. The problem
now seems to be:
        1. How to order Tong2-yin1-zi4
        2. When a character has multiple yin1, which to choose?
the possible choices are:
        1.1 According to bihua,i.e.,number of strokes.
        1.2 According to bu4shou3,
        1.3 According to frequency
I have arranged dictionaries according to frequency. This arrangement may
be the most efficient. But it is subjective to some extent. The existing
published dictionaries all seems to use 1.2 or 1.1. 1.1 provide an almost
unabiguous order. I have used 1.1 type of index a lot. It never give me
any trouble. In the end, one remembers the order. The important thing is,
everybody agrees with the order.
        2.1 according to the highest frequency
        2.2 according to first pinyin.
Here, I would opt for frequency. Since the numbers of such characters are
limited, we can study them case by case. The character "yi1"(one) appears
most often as yi2 or yi4. But we probably should choose "yi1" since most
people do not aware how often they actual pronounce "yi2" and "yi4".
        Before we make our own dicisions, we need to know what other
proposals are there. Is there any National Standards already there? If
the answer is NO, we can just proceed to make our own and push it to
become a standard.
                                        Yan Yong-Xin

---

From: Scott Horne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 May 90 20:55:45 EDT

Actually, in the Chinese metafonts I've been developing (very slowly, and
please don't write for information, as I don't have any), I've been putting
in stroke counts and have been considering adding radicals (`bu4shou3').
The problem with radicals is that there are so many radical systems around.
I'm satisfied with the one used in _Kang1 Xi1 zi4dian3_, but it won't work
at all for jiantizi.

                                        --Scott

---

From: "J.B. WANG" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 May 90 21:06:00 EDT

I have limited number of Chinese books to look at, but I promise that
I will check into a bunch in an Esian Library. Probably Yuan Jiang can
do this favor for us. My impression is that only foreign authors names
are index if there is an index at all. In 99.9% of Chinese books, there
is no index.

If any thing can be called an index in Chinese books, then it is the guide
in a Chinese dictionary. The most popular and standard way today is
Bi3Hua4 and Bu4Shou3 Suo4Yin3
Bao3, plus a few pages of PinYin Suo4Yin3 (the a most representive word
of a Yin1). Of course, there were other methods such Si4Jao3 Hao4Ma2
(four corner code). But actually none of these would serve our purpose.

Yongxin's worry of homonyms is really a problem we should take care of.
This is not a serious problem since most of the things to be indexed
are phases instead of single words, and my way is to sort the homonyms
according to the sequence of occurrance. In Ch-series Chinese inputting
part, the PinYin dictionary is automatically re-arranged according to
the frequency of use, but I tried a few articles, there some words just
don't stay in the same place. Yongxin's recent experience proved that
after a few non-trivial articles, the dictionary becomes reasonably
stable. This is a very successful application of statistics in Chinese
computing. But if we index a book according to the frequency, then in
one book one word is in front of the other, and in the other the
vice-versa. This may evolve into some funny situations. Therefore, let's
keep our mind open first. If Chinese book indexing problem is not
solved, Chinese language will never catch up with this high-tech age.
There are passive ways to avoid this problem, i.e., have all the technical
books and higher education books in English (which is more or less the
case in Taiwan), but we are aiming at solving problems instead of
avoiding them.

By the way, I agree we should be less political in this network, but
unfortunately politics is a definite driving force behind many projects,
such as ch-series project. I personal find it annoying to see
<JianTiZi = CCP * (hard line)>, CCP is only 70 some years old, Chinese
language which included JianTiZi and FanTiZi is thousands years old.
We are promoting Chinese computing here because we feel we are responsible
for it, we like to see standardization of different aspects of Chinese
computing because it is preventing us from doing something more
important. Therefore, we should not expect to do Chinese computing
in vacuum either.

My philosophy is that since Chinese computing is still rather backward,
but thanks to GB we have some bases to work with. If we are not doing
anything new or revolutionary, we are wasting time. The job just to add
a competitive software to the market should be taken by a commercial
company, and we should do something much better than that.

Sincerely yours,

JB Wang

---

From: Huangxin Wang <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 May 90 21:49:31 EDT

Ed Lai of Apple wrote a Chinese dictionary for Macintosh HyperCard.  It is
not a real dictinary, what it does is exactly what we are talking here:
the Chinese indexing.  It is very easy to use, with the Chinese OS on Mac
(need at least 2M RAM).  It is a good frame for set up Chinese indexing, eg.
compile a real dictionary, or compile your Chinese books or references, etc.
Basically, it uses either pin-yin or bu-shou at the lowest level (I find
the second kind most useful, since we usually knows better of how a word
look like than its exact spelling, though in Mac Chinese OS, I usually
use pin-yin as input).  The second level is sorted according to number of
strokes.  Thanks for Ed Lai who shared me the stack.

                Huangxin Wang of University of Pennsylvania

---

From: Scott Horne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 May 90 22:01:23 EDT

Jingbai isn't right in saying that the "Chinese language which included
JianTiZi and FanTiZi is thousands years old".  Not all the jiantizi have
been around for thousands of years.

Which secondary method to use for indexing when some characters have the
same pinyin is not very important in a practical sense.  Think about it:
When you use _Xin1hua2 zi4dian3_, do you open to the beginning of the
appropriate pinyin section and then think of the radical (`bu4shou3') of
the character you're trying to find?  When you're using the radical table
in the front, do you (after counting strokes) look for the section of
the list containing characters with the same first stroke (other than the
radical) as yours?  NO!  You just scan the whole list for your character.
So this isn't a crucial issue.

                                        --Scott

---

From: zhang qing <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 May 90 20:01:23 PDT

It is not just a problem of indexing, it is also a problem of
inputing. If we are going to have unique input, no selections among a
number of possibilities, we need to add an index after pinyin. For
instance: yin1/1 the "yin1" in "yin1wei2"
          yin1/2 the "yin1" in "pin1yin1"
          shi4shi4/1   die
          shi4shi4/2   (thing-thing) everything (adverb)
          shi4shi4/4   world things
In Byx 1.x, I did not allow user to modify the dictionary and did not
allow the order of words change according to usage. What I had in mind
was that over time, user will remember the order of words and make the
correct selections without looking. Competitive pressure bends principles
In Byx 2.0 the user will be able to change anyway they like. But once
there is a standard, the user should at least have the option to go back
to the standard. Think of it, if everyone has the freedom to costumize
to their like, I won't be able to use your computer although we use the
same software. To put it at an extreme, think everyone has his own
keyboard layout.
        Guobiao actually already provides an acceptable order. Those
characters you know how to pronounce are arranged according to Pinyin,
and those you don't know are arranged according to bu4shou3.
        17 years ago, I got Xin1-Hua2-Zi4-Dian3, I first use bu4shou3
method, since I didn't know pinyin at the time. The teacher asked
everyone of use to have a xinhuazidian. When teacher was not looking,
we secretly were having competitions on who can be the fastest to find
a given character. I quickly became the undisputed champion. I could
even tell you which page (or a small range of pages) the character is in.
The secret, is pinyin. I learned pinyin at that time.
        Pinyin is not difficult, it has a gradual learning curve.