Subject: chinese fonts

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 20:35:00 +8

re. C. Yen on BIG 5.

I'm no expert on GB. I got the following by digging up some materials.

In GB, characters are represented by 2 bytes. Legal values for both
the first byte and the second byte are 21 (hexadecimal) to 7E. "Characters"
with the first byte from 21 to 27 (inclusive) are alphabets, numerals and
symbols. Chinese characters are assigned first-byte values from 30 to 7E.
According to my source, first-byte values from 28 to 2F are not assigned.
Thus, character 3021 takes up the position for code point 2821 in cclib.16
(according to the same source). I have not taken a look at cclib.16 to confirm
this, though. (We must be careful because symbols like bo-po-mo-fo are
assigned code values within the first-byte range of 28 to 2F in some systems.)

And, C. Yen is right in saying that ETEN 16X15 fonts are represented each by
30 bytes. On the other hand, CCLIB.16 fonts are 16x16 and are each 32 bytes.

One thing about using GB codes is that in actual systems the
character codes are increased by 8080 to make them easy to recognise
as 2-byte units. For example, 3473 is actually represented as B4F3.

Tom Lai.

---

From: Dr CK Farn <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 1992 19:28:01 +0800

>Ang writes:
> > I understand that Big5 is commonly used in Taiwan.
> > But how about CNS? Is this the standard used in Taiwan or is Big5
> > the standard?
> > Is there any software etc using CNS as the internal code instead of Big5?
>
>I think Big5 and CNS are the same thing.

Big5 and CNS (CNS-11643) are different.  There are many Chinese internal
codes (including Wang, CDC, IBM, Big-5, ETen, TCA, etc.) used by different
users well before the two Chinese Standard (CNS-11643 and CCCII) were
established.  BIG-5 is the name of a Chinese integrated software (parallel
to Framework, including WP, spreadsheet, etc.) developed by III (Inst. of
Info. Industry), and they developed an internal coding scheme and a
character set for it.  Since it was one of the earliest PC-based coding
scheme, it became the de facto standard.  while the government spent lots
of time deciding on which standard to select, the users already settled on
their own.

Currently, most Chinese software makes use of BIG-5, among other things.
Today, most Chines DOS add-ons can process multiple internal codes.  For
example, Rainbow-5, an Eten PC-card can use at least BIG-5, IBM 5550, TCA,
CNS and Wang, Eten, and Wang codes.  Most printers can also process
multiple codes.  As for software, most are unaware of which internal codes
is used (as long as the Chinese extension can process it).

In addition, one can acquire translation programs among these coding
schemes with some efforts.  Some utilities can even do the translation on
the fly, while communicating between two systems using two different coding
schemes (just like between ASCII and EBCDIC).  To day, many Chinese DOS
extension vendors also market versions that can translate between BIG-5 and
GB.

_____________________________________________________________
Dr C.K.Farn       Information Mgmt Dept.,National Central U.,
(-S?~1j)          Chung-li, Taiwan 320, Republic of China
Tel: 886-3-426-7261,886-3-4227151x6527  Fax: 886-3-425-4604
Email: [email-masked]

---

From: Dr CK Farn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 1992 00:03:07 +0800

> > Big5 and CNS (CNS-11643) are different.  ...
>
>Thanks for the correction.  Are they completely different (like Big-5
>and IBM 5550), or are they different only in a relatively small number
>of codes?

Totally different!

These differences can be on the size of the character set (Big5,CNS: 13K+,
CCCII: 70K+), sort sequence, number of bytes (Big5,CNS: 2 bytes, CCCII,
Wang: 3 bytes).  It is a mess!  The government is trying to force the
CNS11643 scheme by requiring it in every gov. acquisition, we will have to
wait and see.
_____________________________________________________________
Dr C.K.Farn       Information Mgmt Dept.,National Central U.,
(-S?~1j)          Chung-li, Taiwan 320, Republic of China
Tel: 886-3-426-7261,886-3-4227151x6527  Fax: 886-3-425-4604
Email: [email-masked]