Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!ico!rcd
From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: X kanji font k14 question
Summary: standard "JIS" encoding
Message-ID: <1990Oct31.005324.13296@ico.isc.com>
Date: 31 Oct 90 00:53:24 GMT
References: <29326@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 51

shirriff@sprite.berkeley.edu (Ken Shirriff) writes:

> Can anyone explain the order of the kanji characters in the X font "k14"
> (JISX0208.1983 encoding)?  It has several thousand kanji characters, but
> as far as I can tell, they're in a random order.

It's a standard encoding of a Japanese character set commonly referred to--
with horrendous over-abbreviation--as "JIS".  It's actually JIS C 6226,
"Code of the Japanese Graphic Character Set for Information Interchange".

(BTW, this is a 2-byte code; don't confuse it with "JISCII" (6220) which is
a one-byte code.)

The arrangement of characters in 6226 goes something like this:
	punctuation (including some for vertical writing)
	special characters
	arabic numerals, 26-char Roman alphabet
	Hiragana
	Katakana
	Greek
	Cyrillic
	line-drawing characters
	two sets of Kanji

In the Hiragana and Katakana, there are separate codes for all possible
characters including the "small" forms and forms with the "diacritical
marks".  (Apologies to Japanese speakers/writers; I am trying to use terms
here which will be understood by western readers.)

There are two groups of Kanji in the remainder of the character set.  The
basis for assigning encodings is different for the two, which is possibly
why it looked "random" to you.  Level 1 Kanji (0x3021-4f53) contains the
more common characters; it is arranged by pronunciation.  Level 2 Kanji
(0x5021-end) contains less common characters, arranged by their primary
radicals.

Again, for the western view: radicals are essentially the major stroke
groups which make up the ideogram.  If you look through Level 2, you'll see
"lots of characters which have similar pieces" grouped together.  If you
think about it, the matter of a lexical ordering in a writing system using
a large number of distinct symbols, instead of composing from a small
alphabet, is an interesting (challenging) exercise.

The actual characters in the font look as if they follow the JIS 16x16
standard bitmaps, although my weary eyes aren't up to checking that very
thoroughly.  I heard a mention that there may be a copyright or license
problem with the k14 font, but I don't know what it is; if you are con-
sidering using it, I'd look further.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...but Meatball doesn't work that way!