Subject: Re: GB and BIG5

From: "Minghui Yao, Dept of Physics, ASU" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1991 12:08:23 TZONE

I don't know much about GB and Big5 technically. But I am an advocator
of simplified Chinese Characters. The evolution of Chinese Characters is
a nature simplifying process, from complex to simplicity. If a language
is unchanged, it is dead.

Merits of simplfed char?
(1)Easy to learn. This is especially important for a country whose
population is over 1100000000, and whose education level is still
comparatively low.
(2)More economical: one can write in simplified char faster.(printer
can print faster?:-) )  This is very important in a modern soceity.
(3)It's nature. Most simplied chars are NOT created unreasonably by
PRC government. They have existed for hundreds of years in Chinese
handwritting.(you can find them in CaoShu and XingSu)

As far as simplified Chinese Char is concerned, GB is adquate.
We have published 34 issues of HXWZ (16000x34 chars).Yet, we have
not come across a single char that could not be found in GB.(some
might say that we used 'substitute':-). But they are not. They are
official chars in mainland China.)  We have not got a complaint
about simplified char from 3400 HXWZ subscribers yet.

As Wei Lin and XiaoFei said in their postings, language is used to
convey an idea. If a 'substituting' char can convey the idea, then
I don't see anything wrong in the 'substitution'. If an 'original'
(or 'traditional') char is used to convey the idea, but 99% people
don't recongnize that char, then the char is useless, it will be
dead(or already dead).

 Minghui Yao