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From: alan@pdn.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: generalised alphabets
Message-ID: <1222@pdn.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-Sep-87 11:54:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: pdn.1222
Posted: Tue Sep  1 11:54:13 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Sep-87 07:18:05 EDT
References: <15488@mordor.s1.gov> <1209@pdn.UUCP> <1296@houdi.UUCP>
Reply-To: alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy)
Organization: Paradyne Corporation, Largo, Florida
Lines: 34
Xref: utgpu sci.lang:1202 comp.std.internat:193

In article <1296@houdi.UUCP> marty1@houdi.UUCP (M.BRILLIANT) writes:
>A 32-bit number could code any possible character that can be described
>in a square 16 pixels on a side.  I think some Chinese ideographs are
>more complex than that.  With run-length coding, the power of a 32-bit
>number is greater, and it might be adequate.

An error and a misunderstanding:

1) The number of possible pictures in an m by n matrix of pixels, where
each pixel can be one of c colors is c^(m*n).  For a 16 x 16 matrix 
of black or white pixels, there are 2^256 possibilities and a 256-bit
number is required.

2) This is NOT what I had in mind at all.  I wanted a simple index to
be assigned to each EXISTING character or ideogram, which index would
be an abstraction independent of any particular graphical representation
or font.

>
>I'm even less certain about the representation of speech sounds.  The
>possible positions of the organs of articulation are continuously
>variable.  Human speech can be as fast as about 10 distinct sounds per
>second.  Coding each sound in 32 bits implies that a vocoder could
>encode human speech at 320 bits per second.  Is that possible?
>

There is something called the International Phonetic Alphabet, which
uses various modifiers to enable the transcription of any human 
speech sound with less than 256 symbols.  This would probably be
adequate, although the finer the resolution (the more characters
representing different phones), the less complicated the system
of modifiers need to be.

pdn