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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: What is a byte
Message-ID: <6270@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 9-Aug-87 19:56:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6270
Posted: Sun Aug  9 19:56:22 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Aug-87 01:33:20 EDT
References: <218@astra.necisa.oz> <142700010@tiger.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 18
Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:3580 comp.std.internat:88

In article <2034@xanth.UUCP> kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>While we're developing nightmares about the number of bits the Japanese
>need in a char, remember for text processing that for 1 billion of the
>earth's residents, the smallest unit of text processing is the ideograph ...

I'm no expert, but I seem to recall that Chinese ideographs (which
as I understand it come in several varieties) are pretty much made
from a (relatively) small set of basic strokes placed in different
positions.  I think there are even Chinese typewriters, or at least
type compositors.  If this is correct, then one possibility would
be to devise a suitable (acceptable to technical Chinese)
representation for ideographs in terms of basic strokes and
placement instructions, which could be treated as text units.

After all, the letter "w" doesn't mean much when taken out of
English context; we too need the whole word-symbol, not just a
letter-component to express a meaning.  It's just that our
alphabet is simpler and is combined in 1 dimension instead of 2.