🚀 go-pugleaf

in article <1116@hp-sdd.HP.COM>, andrea@hp-sdd.HP.COM (Andrea K. Frankel) says:
> Xref: suvax1 comp.text:977 comp.sources.wanted:2475
> 
> In article <2455@druco.ATT.COM> justice@druco.ATT.COM (JusticeB) writes:
>>Does anyone out there have font definitions for the all the Kanji?  I
>>have the Hershey fonts which have about 500-600 of the Kanji
>>definitions, but I need the definitions for ALL the Kanji (There are
>>about 1850 Kanji that are most often used).  
> 
> I hate to tell you this, but there are upwards of 50,000 Kanji
> characters!  
> 
> Some in-house investigation a few years back turned up
> the figures that any particular [user + application] will have a
> "working set" of about 2000 characters, but to accomodate a normal
> variety of users and applications, a given product (such as a printer
> or general-purpose text formatter) has to know over 10,000 of them.
> 
> In an attempt to get the situation under control, the Japanese
> government drew up a core set of characters which newspapers writing
> for the man in the street could rely on; I think this is the 1850 
> figure you are referring to.  However, that set of characters does
> not handle all needs, it's just a foundation to start from.
> 


How very true.  If I'm reading my SANWORD SWP-M7 manual correctly, the JIS1
standard allows for 2965 Kanji characters, plus hiragana, katakana, romaji,
roman numerals, and various graphic/scientific characters which are machine 
dependent.  I believe this was created so that there could be some standard
among all of the computers and word processors available in the Japanese
home market, like ASCII.

It may be infintely easier for you to get a Japanese word processor from
Japan and bring it over (or have someone send it over to you).  The cheaper
models (like mine) will set you back around $300, while the more elaborate
models will cost you more somewhere between $1000-$1500.  Of course, with
the current direction of the Yen-$ exchange rate, the cost is skyrocketing.

I agree with Andrea in that 2000 characters would be all one needs to read
a newspaper.  This is the commonly quoted figure in Japan.

Another alternative would be to see what is out there for Chinese language
word processors/fonts, say in Taiwan (which uses the more archaic forms of
Kanji) or Hong Kong (mixed) or PROC (where they are adopting the simpler
Kanji).  At least, that is my recollection of what is happening in those
countries and regions.


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					- Pat Hirayama
					- Seattle University

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