Subject: UniHan

From: John Delacour <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 20:05:54 EDT

*** In Reply to Wang Jianxiong's posting of Tue, 10 Aug 1993 12:56:47 EST ***

Jianxiong,

I don't think your question is at all stupid.  And the answer is that it is
certainly possible to include the characters in the file cjkref.fix as I know,
since I have spent as much time as possible in the past two weeks doing exactly
that.

I have been slowed down by a number of things - first of all the file is very
large and to load it into a spreadsheet with my computer takes more than half
an hour.  The problem then is that some of the hexadecimal numbers (eg. 4E10)
are formatted as exponential numbers instead of text and some of the GB numbers
are translated into date format.  I have written to John Jenkins suggesting
that he put an apostrophe before each number in the table in order to save
people a lot of time in sorting the columns in a spreadsheet/database. (I am
using a Macintosh SE/30, which is usually very fast, and Excel)

Now that I have sorted out most of the problems I have begun to create tables
which include the Chinese characters for Unicode, GB and Big-5.  Other factors
which have slowed down this (basically simple) process are the inconvenience of
having to work with an antiquated Mac/Chinese system while Apple refuse to make
available the new system and the file needs to be transferred from spreadsheet
to wordprocessor to text editor etc. etc. in order to produce a good
end-result.  Nevertheless I have done half the task sufficiently well for my
own purposes and will eventually uuencode it and make it available to anyone
who is interested.  I have just acquired a 14400bps modem which will make the
uploading of big files a lot cheaper than before.

Although I am working with a Mac, the end result will be a text file so there
should be no problem.

Christian Wittern in Kyoto I know has recently produced some tables but I can't
access them with the Mac.  I guess you read his announcement about three weeks
ago, but if not I will find the information when I have a little more time if
you would E-mail me.

            John           ([email-masked])