Subject: Re: Guo Jin's message

From: Martin Heijdra <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1993 08:44:22 EDT

Guo Jin talked about characters for names being made up. In this context
it is worth noting that in addition to the 74,000 characters the CCIII
group found in character dictionaries (including variants in
Chinese, Japanese and Korean, but I am not sure about unofficial "shorthand"
characters, dialectic characters, or Japanese and Korean unofficial
variants), also some 9,000 (!) characters were found in Taiwan used in
names which were in NO dictionary; in fact, pronunciation could only be
guessed at! They were compiled for the Taiwanese population registration
bureau, which according to CCIII would have no option but declare these
characters "legal". (I don't know the actual result.) This only means
that while the Unicode is certainly sufficient (hey, how many of you come
across characters not in Kangxi Zidian or newer medium-sized dictionaries?
I know, it happens, but very rarely)
for encoding and even more-than-normal use, ANY word processing system
ALWAYS should give the option for creating private characters, since NO
system will ever be able to encompass them all: characters can be created.
And what with Chinese characters used privately for all those southern
Tai-related languages, as well as Chu Nom etc.?

Martin Heijdra.