Re: Ideographic was: and how are they encoded?

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "John H. Jenkins" <jenkins@...> wrote:

>
> ©ó Jul 9, 2004 10:31 AM ®É¡Asuzmccarth ´£¨ì¡G
>
> > This comment on Chinese is found in Unicode version 4. I am

trying

> > to find out what it is doing there. There may be some opaque and
> > ideosyncratic explanation for this like there is for so many

other

> > things. Who knows?
> >
>
> The Unicode Standard is a book about computer representation of

written

> language. It's no more a book about linguistics than Genesis is a
> geology text. While much of Unicode is informed by linguistic

theory,

> the authors feel under no obligation to be as precise about

linguistic

> terminology as they would if they *were* writing a linguistics

text.

> (OTOH, we do feel obligated to be precise when it comes to matters

of

> encoding practice.) This is why we use the term "ideograph,"

which we

> wouldn't use were we writing for linguists. The sentence you

refer to

> is a first-order approximation of the actual situation, written

for

> computer engineers. We know it isn't precisely true, but to

phrase the

> sentence with its proper exactitude for a linguistics setting

would

> simply be obfuscation so far as the actual intended audience is
> concerned.

I think tweaking a few phrases would probably be a good idea. No
more detail is needed.

Suzanne

> ========
> John H. Jenkins
> jenkins@...
> jhjenkins@...
> http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/