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From: stuart@bms-at.UUCP (Stuart Gathman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Iconitis
Summary: Chinese dictionaries
Message-ID: <157@bms-at.UUCP>
Date: 14 Apr 89 15:29:36 GMT
References: <754@oravax.UUCP> <225800146@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <9937@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1936@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Organization: Business Management Systems, Inc., Fairfax, VA
Lines: 14

In article <1936@dataio.Data-IO.COM>, bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) writes:

> is the lexicographic order? (P.S. How do the Chinese find their icons
> in a dictionary?)

Chinese (and Japanese) icons are constructed from about 200 ideograms.
(Small symbols put together to form a larger one.)

Lexical order is determined by ideogram order which in most cases scans
top to bottom, left to right.  There are a few arcane exceptions, but 
no worse than those in vogue in English library card catalogs.
-- 
Stuart D. Gathman	<stuart@bms-at.uucp>
			<..!{vrdxhq|daitc}!bms-at!stuart>