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From: schwrtze@acf8.UUCP (E. Schwartz group)
Newsgroups: net.internat
Subject: Re: Int'l character sets (really sorting Chinese)
Message-ID: <10460002@acf8.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Mar-86 18:05:00 EST
Article-I.D.: acf8.10460002
Posted: Sat Mar  1 18:05:00 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 3-Mar-86 01:13:10 EST
References: <15711@rochester.UUCP>
Organization: New York University
Lines: 20

A Chinese-English dictionary in my posession, one that is used by many people
from Taiwan as well as by myself, has four indices to the characters:

	1.  by the traditional radical ordering.  Each radical's characters
	    are sorted in increasing stroke order.
	2.  by strict stroke order.  The characters within each number of
	    strokes are sorted by radical.
	3.  by the well-known ordering of the Chinese phonetic symbols
	    (zhuyin fuhao, or 'bo-po-mo-fo'), subdivided by tone.
	4.  by alphabetic order in the Wade-Giles romanisation, subdivided
	    by tone.

I find that each of the indices has its moments, depending on what properties
of the character I am searching for come most easily to mind.  I would
further submit that the four-corner system is not so commonly used as any
of the above.

				Alan Shaw
				alan@nyu-alaya.arpa
				cmcl2!alaya!alan