tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-188945372012-01-25T01:05:13.803ZAndrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.comBlogger1041100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-78283968197035214822011-12-22T20:19:00.001Z2011-12-26T22:53:25.494Z

Perhaps the core problem of Tangutology, which has directly and indirectly involved most of the effort of most Tangutolgists most of the time, has been the reconstruction of the pronunciation of the extinct Tangut language. Modern reconstructions of Tangut are largely based on the evidence provided by a few surviving Tangut lexico-phonological works such as the Homophones and the Sea of Writing,

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-90131730503136088382011-11-11T23:54:00.002Z2011-12-24T14:01:21.907Z

In last week's blog post about a Phags-pa Uyghur inscription at Dunhuang, I mentioned that there are very few extant examples of Uyghur written in the Phags-pa script, so this week I thought I'd take a look at some examples of Phags-pa Uyghur seal imprints on 14th century Old Uyghur and Mongolian documents. It turns out that that the place where you can find the largest number of manuscripts

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-67373275315296226822011-11-04T01:02:00.001Z2011-12-24T14:01:21.908Z

[This is a revised version of a blog post that I first published on 12 May 2007, but which I later deleted.] The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas 千佛洞 near the ancient Silk Road town of Dunhuang 敦煌 are world famous for their beautiful Buddhist murals, dating from the 4th through the 14th centuries. And like many such places, visitors over the centuries have taken delight in defacing them with

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-28981060001531822382011-10-29T22:46:00.004+01:002011-12-24T14:01:03.902Z

For the last of my impromptu trilogy of posts on manuscript fragments in extinct scripts that are freely available online thanks to the International Dunhuang Project I would like to take a look at an unprovenanced (but presumed to be from Dunhuang) manuscript of the Tangut translation of the Platform Sutra (六祖壇經) that is held at the Fu Ssu-nien Library at Academia Sinica in Taibei. This item

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-32502621376447235772011-10-26T22:16:00.001+01:002011-11-02T21:04:00.676Z

[This is a revised version of a blog post that I first published on 7 February 2007, but which I later deleted for unknown reasons. I was reminded of it by my recent blog post on a fragment of a Khitan manuscript, and so am republishing it today.] The remains of the Tangut fortress city known in Mongolian as Kharakhoto "Black City" and in Chinese as Heishuicheng 黑水城 "Black Water City" are

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-67143535971664661782011-10-22T17:35:00.006+01:002011-12-24T14:02:22.145Z

On Boxing Day last year I wrote a blog post about the mystery of the two Khitan scripts in which I confidently asserted that "not a single manuscript or printed text in either Khitan script has survived". Ironically, less than a month earlier, on the 29th November 2010, my friend Viacheslav Zaytsev of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts [IOM] in Saint Petersburg had announced his

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-21507292424018688592011-08-29T21:39:00.002+01:002011-09-01T09:22:07.615+01:00

I have previously discussed how complex the Tangut script is, and how Tangut characters are constructed like interconnected jigsaw puzzles using a method of character construction that I believe is not used for any other known writing system. But it is not only the Tangut script that is difficult and mysterious; the Tangut language is also hard to fathom, and has features that are difficult to

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-32464450680470757902011-07-11T01:59:00.012+01:002011-12-24T14:02:22.146Z

Several bronze mirrors with Khitan inscriptions are known, including this well known example with a 28 character poetic inscription in the Small Khitan script : Bronze mirror with Small Khitan inscription at the National Museum, Seoul, Korea [CC-BY-SA-2.0 by John S Y Lee] However, such mirrors are exceedingly rare, and so when a correspondent recently sent me a picture of a bronze mirror with

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-2867808464864986172011-06-30T23:01:00.002+01:002011-06-30T23:06:23.468+01:00

The Ogham Stones of Cornwall and Devon The Ogham Stones of Wales The Ogham Stones of Scotland The Ogham Stones of the Isle of Man The Ogham Stones of Ireland The Ogham Stones of Elsewhere The Isle of Man, situated midway between Ireland and Britain, has always been at a sea-faring crossroads, and over the centuries has been exposed to influences from many different cultures. This is well

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-2778195541325206082011-06-13T23:03:00.005+01:002011-09-22T19:04:29.208+01:00

Previously discussed : What's new in Unicode 5.0 ? What's new in Unicode 5.1 ? What's new in Unicode 5.2 ? What's new in Unicode 6.0 ? [2011-09-22 Update: Unicode 6.1.0 is now in BETA, and is scheduled for release in February 2012.] Unicode 6.1 is scheduled for release in Spring 2012, and will be synchronized to the 3rd edition of ISO/IEC 10646 (see Unicode Liaison Report to WG2).

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-38524752070038750912011-05-08T23:55:00.002+01:002011-09-21T21:58:45.443+01:00

As a follow-up to my recent javascript-based Unicode Slide Show, I have now made available BabelMap Online, a javascript-based Unicode character browser based on BabelMap, my popular Unicode Character Map application. It does not have all the utilities and special features that the real BabelMap provides, but it should be a useful tool for finding and picking Unicode characters online. You can

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-27092511398225360672011-04-16T20:23:00.011+01:002011-09-21T21:57:18.522+01:00

A recent youtube video by jörg piringer that scrolls through "all" 49,571 Unicode characters in 33 minutes and 16 seconds (25 characters a second) has been doing the rounds, but I'm afraid that I was not impressed. The 49,571 characters in the video only cover the BMP, and even then it is 5,000 characters short, missing out most of the characters that have been added to Unicode over the past ten

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-61194751689510754022011-01-01T23:45:00.011Z2011-09-10T20:35:33.142+01:00

Part 1 : Funerary Statuettes of Liubo Players Part 2 : Pictures of People playing Liubo Part 3 : Pictures of Immortals playing Liubo Part 4 : Liubo Boards and Game Equipment Part 5 : Liubo Divination Part 6 : Liubo Patterns on Mirrors and Coins Appendix : Eighteen-Sided Dice 6. Liubo Boards and Game Equipment A large number of Liubo boards and associated game equipment have been found as

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-69929632846386670372010-12-26T23:36:00.009Z2011-12-24T14:02:22.147Z

The Khitan people who lived in northern China during the 10th through 13th centuries spoke the now extinct, and poorly understood, Khitan language. For me, the most intriguing thing about the Khitan language is that it was written using two different writing systems. Khitan Large Script (契丹大字) The Khitan people who lived in northern China during the 10th through 13th centuries spoke the now

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-49181024524300755192010-10-24T12:52:00.007+01:002010-10-27T21:48:42.388+01:00

New versions of BabelPad and BabelMap that support Unicode 6.0 have been released today, and can be downloaded directly : BabelPad.zip (simply unzip the file BabelPad.exe and run it from wherever you like) BabelMap.zip (simply unzip the file BabelMap.exe and run it from wherever you like) Technical Note BabelPad and BabelMap were scheduled for release on 11 October, to coincide with the

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-86221558811333977892010-05-24T07:23:00.007+01:002011-08-26T19:57:45.998+01:00

Why Windows 7 No Longer Sucks [2011-03-01] On 22nd February 2011 Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) was released, and I am very pleased to say that all the rendering issues discussed below are now solved. Typing PUA Tangut under Windows 7 plus SP1 Internet Explorer 8 under Windows 7 plus SP1 Original Post [2010-05-24] In many ways Windows 7 is a great improvement on Vista, but

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-42625944231193111932010-04-27T00:19:00.009+01:002011-08-29T16:17:58.108+01:00

Notes for an introductory talk on the Tangut script given at SOAS on 21st May 2009 Part 1 : How Complex is Tangut ? Part 2 : Untangling the Web of Characters Part 3 : Tangut Homographs 2.1 The Sea of Characters ·jwɨr ŋjow 文海 wén hǎi The mid 12th century monoglot Tangut rhyming dictionary, the "Sea of Characters" (Wén Hǎi 文海 in Chinese), provides a

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-26804490114353182882010-03-01T23:16:00.005Z2011-06-30T23:45:36.221+01:00

The Ogham Stones of Cornwall and Devon The Ogham Stones of Wales The Ogham Stones of Scotland The Ogham Stones of the Isle of Man The Ogham Stones of Ireland The Ogham Stones of Elsewhere Wales has the greatest number of Ogham stones of any region outside of Ireland (35 stones with definite Ogham inscriptions), but as can be seen from the map below, they are unevenly distributed, with large

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-78342618832022622082009-12-25T23:22:00.013Z2010-06-15T23:08:18.177+01:00

The British archaeological discovery of the year must be the Staffordshire Hoard (which perhaps should better be known as the Hammerwich Hoard), which is a hoard of more than 1,500 Anglo-Saxon gold and silver items (tentatively dated to the 7th or 8th centuries) that were discovered on 5th July by a metal detectorist in a field just south of Watling Street, within the parish of Hammerwich, near

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-2186019653383451982009-12-13T23:31:00.022Z2010-09-30T21:31:11.266+01:00

A new and improved version of BabelPad that supports Unicode 5.2 has just been released, and can be downloaded directly by clicking here (simply unzip the file BabelPad.exe and run it from wherever you like). BabelPad will run on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 systems, but I no longer provide a build that will run under Windows 95/98/Me (an unsupported build of Version 1.9.3 for Windows 95, 98 and

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-48251739685187052912009-11-15T23:50:00.012Z2011-07-04T23:43:31.005+01:00

It is not often that a new Ogham stone is discovered, so when last week someone asked me to take a look at a piece of slate with a possible Ogham inscription on it that they had just found, I was excited, but not overly hopeful that it would turn out to be a genuine Ogham inscription. I frequently get people sending me pictures of various artefacts to identify, and nine times out of ten the

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-59124878518733154062009-11-12T01:51:00.019Z2011-06-30T23:44:47.300+01:00

The Ogham Stones of Cornwall and Devon The Ogham Stones of Wales The Ogham Stones of Scotland The Ogham Stones of the Isle of Man The Ogham Stones of Ireland The Ogham Stones of Elsewhere Ogham stones occur throughout the areas of Britain that border the Irish Sea, from Shetland and Orkney in the north, through Scotland, the Isle of Man and Wales, down to Devon and Cornwall in the south.

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-21233160161116736042009-11-08T23:51:00.041Z2011-07-05T00:06:35.220+01:00

The Ogham Stones of Cornwall and Devon The Ogham Stones of Wales The Ogham Stones of Scotland The Ogham Stones of the Isle of Man The Ogham Stones of Ireland The Ogham Stones of Elsewhere In anticipation of next week's blog post, I thought it would be useful to present a brief survey of the known Ogham stone inscriptions in Cornwall and Devon. Although the large majority of Ogham stones are

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-20700441753334269692009-11-01T22:33:00.025Z2011-04-17T00:04:26.960+01:00

Previously discussed : What's new in Unicode 5.0 ? What's new in Unicode 5.1 ? What's new in Unicode 5.2 ? [2010-10-11 : Unicode 6.0 was released on the 11th October 2010.] [2010-08-30 : The Indian Rupee Sign (see N3862) has now been accepted for fast-tracking into Unicode 6 at U+20B9 by the Unicode Technical Committee, although it is not in either of the corresponding amendments of ISO/IEC

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-52404978683349104902009-10-10T22:43:00.007+01:002011-10-24T15:28:08.464+01:00

A lot of people hate simplified Chinese characters, but I personally think they are great, and that the only things better than simplified Chinese characters are simplified simplified Chinese characters. But for some reason most of the second stage simplified characters introduced in 1977 (and abandonned less than a year later) remain unencoded in Unicode, so it is difficult for

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-20479783656341986712009-10-01T23:04:00.017+01:002010-09-30T21:31:49.450+01:00

Coinciding with the release of Unicode 5.2 today (code charts), I am releasing a new version of BabelMap that supports Unicode 5.2 (download BabelMap now). Unicode 5.2 adds 6,648 new characters and 15 new scripts (Table of Unicode scripts), including 1,071 basic Egyptian Hieroglyphs and 4,149 additional Han "ideographs" (taking the total number of "CJK Unified Ideographs" to 74,394, with another

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com64tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-10135310294715586312009-08-28T00:33:00.011+01:002011-12-24T14:02:22.148Z

Last year my friend Nathan Hill kindly invited me to give a talk on Tangut at my Alma Mater. I accepted with some trepidation because I am still very much at the start of a long and steep learning curve with regards to Tangut, but I hoped that by the time the talk was due to be given in May this year I would have something interesting and exciting to talk about. Unfortunately I got tied up with

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-12845695160473473772009-08-16T01:04:00.006+01:002010-01-06T01:07:07.561Z

The Holy Grail for historians of character encoding is to discover why the háček (ˇ)—a diacritical mark which looks like an inverted circumflex—is called a caron in character encoding standards such as Unicode. Until the recent popularisation of Unicode, the term caron seems to have been virtually unknown outside of character encoding standards, and has no obvious etymology or source, whereas the

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-37733189542978467842009-08-08T14:46:00.005+01:002011-08-14T18:39:21.066+01:00

Part 1 : Funerary Statuettes of Liubo Players Part 2 : Pictures of People playing Liubo Part 3 : Pictures of Immortals playing Liubo Part 4 : Liubo Boards and Game Equipment Part 5 : Liubo Divination Part 6 : Liubo Patterns on Mirrors and Coins Appendix : Eighteen-Sided Dice One intriguing motif that is found mainly on engraved stone coffins from the area of modern Sichuan

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-12559793937201935132009-07-12T09:53:00.011+01:002011-09-10T19:25:15.738+01:00

Part 1 : Funerary Statuettes of Liubo Players Part 2 : Pictures of People playing Liubo Part 3 : Pictures of Immortals playing Liubo Part 4 : Liubo Boards and Game Equipment Part 5 : Liubo Divination Part 6 : Liubo Patterns on Mirrors and Coins Appendix : Eighteen-Sided Dice As can be seen on this page, there are a great many depictions of Liubo players dating to the Han dynasty, most of

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-36244415296435176492009-05-10T23:02:00.032+01:002011-08-14T18:54:32.514+01:00

The ancient Chinese game of Liùbó 六博 or 六簙 (Old Chinese *lĭə̆uk *păk — but see Amritas for more modern reconstructions of these characters), meaning 'six sticks', was immensely popular during the latter part of the Warring States period (476–221 BCE) and throughout the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), but later faded into oblivion. However in recent years there have been a considerable number of

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-27448365265462312242009-04-15T22:18:00.031+01:002011-09-27T00:43:11.449+01:00

For several years I have been collecting information relating to the early history of Chinese board games, which I have now decided to publish as a series of non-narrative posts over the next few weeks. I am starting with the game of Go (Chinese wéiqí 圍棋), which is perhaps not so interesting as it has already been done many times before (for example, see such sites as 中國圍棋史話, 古代围棋图片 and 围棋考古).

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-77297114311470476512009-01-01T21:42:00.008Z2010-01-06T00:56:31.011Z

It has become a Christmas tradition for me to read to my children Raymond Briggs' Chronicles of Father Christmas and J.R.R. Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters. Taking a Christmas break from Tangut, this year I have finally found time to create a font for the Goblin Alphabet used by the North Polar Bear in the Father Christmas Letters. Polar Bear's Christmas Letter from J.R.R. Tokien's The Father

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-39830769665733751552009-01-01T00:05:00.005Z2010-12-04T15:52:48.607Z

My original 72 views of the Tower of Babel concentrated on medieval and early pre-modern views of the tower, but over the last couple of years I have found some really good modern interpretations of the Tower of Babel, which I think deserve a page of their own. Although at present there are only half the number of modern views suggested by the nominal figure of 72 in the title, I am sure that the

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-21032007890626258332008-12-31T23:42:00.006Z2011-08-20T20:21:03.427+01:00

I have decided that my most popular blog post, 72 Views of the Tower of Babel, has far outgrown itself (well over a hundred and twenty images at last count), and in order to make the views of the Tower of Babel easier for me to manage, as well as hopefully more accessible to visitors, I am restricting the original page to medieval views, and putting post-medieval views on this page, and starting

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-35317365272956018852008-12-25T22:20:00.009Z2010-01-06T00:54:17.373Z

It probably comes as a surprise to most people to find out that the earliest extant manuscript to include any text written in the Ogham script is an early 12th century English manuscript copy of a work by the late Anglo-Saxon monk Byrhtferth (Byrhtferð) rather than one of the more famous Irish manuscripts that include descriptions of the Ogham script, such as the Book of Ballymote or the Yellow

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-61113793057799256722008-10-13T00:28:00.007+01:002010-03-02T16:32:13.317Z

I installed the beta of Internet Explorer 8 a couple of days ago, as I had heard that it now supports top-to-bottom text orientation with left-to-right line progression, which is the traditional text layout for Mongolian, Manchu and Phags-pa. IE6 and IE7 have supported top-to-bottom orientation with right-to-left line progression using the CSS writing-mode : tb-rl style, but IE8 adds support for

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-89162463210298841492008-09-27T14:14:00.006+01:002010-03-30T22:06:02.932+01:00

Exactly twenty-five years ago I started studying Chinese at SOAS, and to commemorate a journey of learning that has taken me far and ended nowhere, I thought it would be nice to show off some souvenirs from China that some very generous friends of mine have kindly given me over the past year or so—four gifts in four different scripts that I am interested in. Postcards from the Palace Museum My

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-29745802921148413532008-07-24T08:54:00.007+01:002011-08-29T17:55:24.833+01:00

As I hinted at in my previous post, the history of Chinese Chess (Xiangqi 象棋) does not go back nearly as far as that of Go or even Backgammon. There is no convincing evidence that any form of chess was played in China before the Tang dynasty (618-907), and even during the Tang dynasty there is only very limited documentary evidence for the game, and no certain archeological evidence, so it does

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-28092971273746468072008-07-12T21:33:00.010+01:002011-01-04T01:54:03.348Z

Despite the large number of Song (960–1279) and Yuan (1271–1368) dynasty Chinese Chess pieces that have been discovered, there are few early depictions of Chinese Chess (Xiangqi 象棋) being played, and I do not know of any examples of Chinese Chess boards predating the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). One of the few examples of a Yuan dynasty painting relating to Chinese Chess is this mural, believed to

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-85844366510768782002008-05-15T01:24:00.015+01:002011-06-30T23:46:18.788+01:00

The discovery of an Ogham stone during an episode of the cult British archaeology programme, Time Team, is something that I have been longing to blog about ever since I saw the first broadcast on January 14th last year. But the only images of the stone and its inscription available on the Time Team website are pitifully small and utterly useless, so I was unable to do anything meaningful ... that

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-51365941726456047582008-04-27T17:20:00.027+01:002010-04-13T00:49:26.487+01:00

Previously discussed : What's new in Unicode 5.0 ? What's new in Unicode 5.1 ? [2009-10-01 : Unicode 5.2 has now been released (Unicode Code Charts, BabelMap)] As most of us are still trying to get to grips with Unicode 5.1, which was only released three weeks ago, it may seem a little premature to start talking about Unicode 5.2, but I'm blogging about it early this time because 5.2

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-9579370816389633012008-04-06T17:32:00.006+01:002010-01-06T00:50:14.150Z

To coincide with Friday's release of Unicode 5.1.0 I am releasing an updated version of BabelMap which supports all 100,713 characters encoded in Unicode 5.1 (1,624 new characters and 11 new scripts). In addition to the support for Unicode 5.1 this version also has the following improvements (most of which I only added in last week, which is why it was released two days late). However, I am

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-5208014610193399232008-02-06T23:08:00.002Z2010-01-06T00:36:27.046Z

As a respite from the interminable rewriting of BabelMap and BabelPad, over the last few days I have been creating a few fun cipher fonts for my children. I am still working on several more, but to celebrate the end of the Year of the Pig I thought I would release what I have done so far, so that children of all ages might enjoy them : BabelStone Pigpen BabelStone Club Penguin BabelStone Leeson

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-4604475686885423712008-01-13T01:59:00.003Z2010-03-02T16:11:41.610Z

Every now and then people ask me for advise about some fine object that they have bought on ebay, and usually it makes me glad that my job does not pay me enough to develop an ebay habit. But just in case any of my more affluent readers are tempted to start collecting antique Chinese or Tibetan seals, I thought that it might be useful to take a look at three seals that I have recently seen for

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-90593501337235252122008-01-01T23:50:00.006Z2010-04-27T21:42:32.310+01:00

Regular readers will remember that last summer I was looking at the various Zhang Zhung Scripts associated with the Tibetan Bon tradition, and in particular I was interested in the sMar chen སྨར་ཆེན style of script, for which I created a test font. One of the problems in studying these scripts is a paucity of materials written in the scripts themselves other than tables of letters that are given

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-16578812019211065602007-12-02T16:37:00.008Z2011-05-01T16:41:54.983+01:00

The CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B [13MB] block that was added to Unicode/10646 in 2001 comprises 42,711 characters, and it is no secret that there are many problems with this huge collection of mostly quite rare characters, including hundreds of cases of unifiable characters that have been erroneously encoded separately and even a handful of completely duplicate characters. There is enough

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-21204644472108826462007-11-09T01:02:00.001Z2010-01-06T00:33:57.504Z

It is hard to blog in my current circumstances, but as a kind friend sent me a copy of Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen I think I might write something about it, if only to keep the blog alive as its second anniversary approaches (this will also be the sixtieth post and the end of the first cycle). Hopefully I will be able to get back to serious blogging again sometime soon,

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-38549888388435681342007-07-08T14:21:00.001+01:002010-01-06T00:33:17.064Z

As I have intimated on more than one occasion, one of the challenges facing Unicode and WG2 is how to successfully encode historic scripts which mostly do not have a standard, well-defined repertoire and which frequently exhibit great variation in character repertoire and glyph forms geographically and/or chronologically. The problems are often exacerbated by the fact that different scholars may

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-83659202852238632172007-07-02T00:22:00.004+01:002010-09-03T00:37:04.543+01:00

It has been remarked now and then that Unicode basically consists of an innumerable number of Han thingies to which assorted non-Han detritus has attached itself. And this does seem to be borne out from the figures : Percentage of Han Characters within the Unicode Repertoire UnicodeVersion TotalCharacters Han Script Characters EverythingElse Percentage ofHan Characters CJK

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-4939489926865061782007-06-28T23:40:00.001+01:002010-01-06T00:32:08.000Z

One of the most controversial encoding mechanisms provided by Unicode is that of variation selectors. Some people revile them as "pseudo-coding" whilst others are eager to embrace them as a solution for almost every new encoding issue that arises. Personally I think that they provide an essential mechanism for selecting contextual glyph forms in isolation or overriding the default contextual

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-37622216643767521922007-06-21T23:43:00.007+01:002010-01-06T00:31:38.284Z

In Memoriam Paul Thompson (2007-06-12) 騰蛇游霧，飛龍乘雲，雲罷霧霽，與蚯蚓同，則失其所乘也。 My friend Asmus Freytag (who has just retired from active participation in Unicode after many years of dedication to Unicode and WG2) recently bemoaned the total lack of interest in CJK-C on the public Unicode mailing list. Whilst it is true that there has been little overt interest in the latest addition to the already huge

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-12851565863681818632007-06-08T22:47:00.014+01:002010-01-06T00:31:03.539Z

Back in November 2005 I asked What's new in Unicode 5.0 ? in anticipation of its release in July of the following year. Now that Unicode 5.0 has been out for nearly a year I thought it would be good time to look ahead to what is in store for Unicode 5.1. Just to be clear, Unicode 5.1 won't be released until the spring or summer of 2008, but the character repertoire is already basically fixed, and

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-14236061884991197032007-06-05T00:42:00.016+01:002011-06-13T20:53:43.199+01:00

The thing about blogging is that you never quite know who is reading your blog, and you certainly don't know whether any readers you do have find what you write of any great interest or not (other than the history and rules of long s, which are my most googled posts), so when a few days ago I got an email suggesting that I write a post about current Unicode developments (my first and only blog

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-53124788036767952492007-05-30T00:11:00.011+01:002010-01-06T00:30:08.738Z

To complement my post on Zhang Zhung scripts I have created an experimental OpenType Unicode font for the block style of sMar-chen script that is shown in Yig gzugs du ma'i ma phyi gzhon nu mdzes pa'i lang tsho ཡིག་གཟུགས་དུ་མའི་མ་ཕྱི་གཞོན་ནུ་མཛེས་པའི་ལང་ཚོ (1994) pages 7-9. I choose this script and style as sMar-chen is my favourite Zhang Zhung script, and the block style seemed to be the easiest

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-53050951868063732472007-05-27T16:10:00.002+01:002010-01-06T00:29:43.163Z

The Zhang Zhung ཞང་ཞུང culture (pronounced shang shung in the modern Lhasa dialect) is an ancient culture that flourished in the western and northern parts of Tibet before the introduction of Buddhism into the country during the 7th century. For a long time there was little concrete evidence of the existence of the Zhang Zhang kingdom described in Tibetan sources, and it was regarded as

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-81096153860958944772007-05-04T23:54:00.001+01:002010-03-02T16:11:41.612Z

In my spare time (!) I am collecting material for a Dictionary of Phags-pa (Chinese, Mongolian, Uighur, Sanskrit written in the Phags-pa script), which should be ready for publication in ten or twenty years time at the current rate of progress. In the meantime I thought I would post about a couple of Phags-pa inscriptions that I am having difficulty with, in the hope that some of my kind readers

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-36367741275558471602007-04-07T22:53:00.001+01:002011-12-24T14:06:12.522Z

One set of numbers that have caused no end of discussion since they were first encoded in Unicode 2.0 (July 1996) are the ten Tibetan half digits, which are forms of the Tibetan digits zero through nine [U+0F20..U+0F29] with a hooked slash through them : U+0F2A ༪ TIBETAN DIGIT HALF ONE [1/2] U+0F2B ༫ TIBETAN DIGIT HALF TWO [3/2] U+0F2C ༬ TIBETAN DIGIT HALF THREE [5/2] U+0F2D ༭ TIBETAN DIGIT

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-52583641371299305512007-04-01T13:37:00.001+01:002010-01-06T00:27:43.439Z

One of the properties defined by Unicode that I am least fond of is the numeric value of a character. It's obvious what the use of this property is for scripts which have special numeric digits such as "0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9". However, in many scripts ordinary letters can double up as numbers, so there is no clear differentiation between a number and a letter, and the numeric definition

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-74660411717077140242007-03-18T16:11:00.001Z2010-01-06T00:26:05.831Z

Two hundred years ago, on the last day of January 1807, Robert Morrison embarked on a voyage to China as the first protestant missionary to that country. During the next sixteen years, whilst living at Canton and Macau, he accumulated an impressive collection of many thousands of Chinese books covering a broad range of subjects. Morrison was a quick and eager student of the Chinese language, and

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-53725150511360615392007-01-29T00:13:00.005Z2011-08-29T17:23:37.445+01:00

In my previous post I discussed a Yuan dynasty coin with a Tangut character on it, so I thought that as a follow-up to this it would be a useful learning exercise for me to have a go at reading the Tangut inscriptions on the coins that were issued by the Western Xia 西夏 regime during the 11th-12th centuries. Now I'm sure that someone has already analysed all the Tangut coin inscriptions in some

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-71493178606310743632007-01-10T23:51:00.002Z2011-08-29T17:30:55.167+01:00

This is probably my favourite Yuan dynasty coin, a rare special issue that has an obverse inscription in four different scripts. This particular example, with twin phoenixes on the reverse, sold in China recently for RMB 55,000 (nearly USD 7,000) [another example]. It is also quite an enigmatic coin, with different sources providing different explanations of the scripts and their

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-22979534827372881172007-01-08T23:29:00.001Z2010-01-06T00:23:02.865Z

Here's an entry for a Chinese character meaning "to blink" or "to twinkle" in a standard Chinese-English dictionary : Han-Ying Cidian 漢英詞典 (Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1980) p.594. Notice anything funny about it ? Not really, then try typing it up using Unicode ... oops, now where is that character ? ... you know, the one with a mù 目 radical and shǎn 㚒 phonetic. Look as hard as you like, but not

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-20064671270490027772007-01-01T16:05:00.013Z2011-10-30T00:49:48.724+01:00

Image Description Illustration to the Cædmon Manuscript (parts of Genesis, Exodus and Daniel in Old English verse) MS. Junius 11 page 82 Bodleian Library, Oxford, England England, circa 1000 Illustration to the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy and Joshua) Cotton Claudius B. IV folio 19r British Library,

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-79865932920586496912006-12-31T18:38:00.001Z2010-03-02T16:11:41.614Z

As I mentioned recently, the rhyming dictionary Menggu Ziyun 蒙古字韻 provides a list of seal script forms of Phags-pa letters. As this is the only source of information about Phags-pa seal script letters other than actual Yuan dynasty seals it is obviously a very important resource. However, the table of letters is quite confusing, and so this is my attempt to make some sense of it all. Source :

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-58061259998819953192006-12-30T12:30:00.001Z2010-03-02T16:11:41.615Z

Except for that I have been hiccupping continuously since Boxing Day, this year has been a good Christmas for me, with two marvellous additions to my library from a couple of very generous friends of mine. A Tangut Dictionary From Michael Everson I received a copy of Wenhai Yanjiu 文海研究 (Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 1983), which is a study of the mid 12th century monoglot Tangut Rhyming

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-63161009596209609562006-12-29T23:52:00.002Z2010-03-02T16:11:41.616Z

The final Phags-pa font that I am releasing for the time being is BabelStone Phags-pa Seal, which is a "seal script" style font that can be downloaded from the the BabelStone Fonts blog. This has been a very difficult font to implement, and I am not terribly satisfied with the results, but rather than labouring on it any further I will release it now and maybe work some more on it at some future

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-37928993414895135002006-12-24T23:58:00.003Z2010-03-02T16:11:41.617Z

I have now released two Tibetan style Phags-pa fonts, unimaginatively named "BabelStone Phags-pa Tibetan A" and "BabelStone Phags-pa Tibetan B", which may be downloaded from the BabelStone Fonts blog. BabelStone Phags-pa Tibetan A BabelStone Phags-pa Tibetan B These fonts are both modelled on Phags-pa script primers such as the example below (with Lantsa, Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese and

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-48473773749515082722006-12-23T22:33:00.001Z2010-03-02T16:11:41.618Z

After having discussed the basics of Phags-pa Shaping Behaviour, I thought it would be a good idea to discuss one final piece of essential Phags-pa knowledge before moving on to other things in the new year. That is, the four "alternate" letters for YA, SHA, HA and FA used in one particular Chinese Phags-pa text : U+A86D ꡭ PHAGS-PA LETTER ALTERNATE YA U+A86E ꡮ PHAGS-PA LETTER VOICELESS SHA U+

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-8603377589221210862006-12-23T21:47:00.001Z2010-03-02T16:11:41.619Z

Now that I have released my first Phags-pa font, I thought it would be useful to discuss Phags-pa shaping behaviour, as very few people are familiar with the script, and it is quite complex. Further information on the Phags-pa script, its encoding model and shaping behaviour can be found in Section 10.3 of The Unicode Standard version 5.0. First of all, here is a table of the encoded Phags-pa

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-66570368057934683792006-12-21T23:55:00.004Z2010-03-02T16:11:41.619Z

Part of the 1345 Phags-pa Sanskrit inscription at Juyongguan To celebrate the recent encoding of the Phags-pa script in Unicode 5.0 I am releasing some free OpenType Unicode Phags-pa fonts that fully implement Phags-pa shaping behaviour (for which see Section 10.3 of The Unicode Standard version 5.0). These fonts work correctly under Windows XP and later, although I have had to set the script

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-24564797553105852202006-11-25T10:13:00.001Z2010-03-02T16:11:41.620Z

Of the City and Great Haven of Zayton Now when you quit Fuju [Fuzhou] and cross the River, you travel for five days south-east through a fine country, meeting with a constant succession of flourishing cities, towns, and villages, rich in every product. You travel by mountains and valleys and plains, and in some places by great forests in which are many of the trees which give Camphor. There is

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-48305446646283542732006-11-05T16:20:00.013Z2011-12-24T14:06:12.523Z

Mani stones are stones that are carved with the famous Sanskrit mantra oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ, which is known periphrastically as the "six-syllable mantra" (liùzì zhēnyán 六字真言 in Chinese and yi ge drug pa in Tibetan). The origins of the mantra are obscure, but it is normally associated with the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Tibetan spyan ras gzigs "Chenrezig"), particularly his four-armed manifestation,

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1161558901217981072006-10-22T23:45:00.003+01:002011-12-24T14:06:12.524Z

I have been trying to learn, in an on-and-off fashion, literary Mongolian for several years now, and I had to learn Manchu (a much more pleasing language than Mongolian to my mind) when, many years ago, I was researching the Manchu translation of the great Chinese historical novel, Sanguo Yanyi 三國演義 "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (Ilan Guran i Bithe ᡳᠯᠠᠨ ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ ᡳ ᠪᡳᡨᡥᡝ in Manchu), so it was

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1158709512857517522006-09-20T00:24:00.001+01:002011-12-24T14:06:12.525Z

When discussing Balti extensions for Tibetan recently I talked a little about the use of U+0F39 TIBETAN MARK TSA -PHRU for writing shorthand contractions, and whilst I'm still in a Tibetanish mood I thought I might discuss Tibetan shorthand contractions in some more detail, especially as I have just made available a List of Tibetan Shorthand Contractions that I have garnered from various sources.

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1158450080086486822006-09-17T00:32:00.001+01:002011-12-24T14:06:12.526Z

As discussed in Part 1, in 2002-2003 China tried and failed to get nearly a thousand precomposed Tibetan characters encoded in ISO/IEC 10646 (which is the international standard corresponding to Unicode). Following on from this humiliating defeat, in April of 2004 Joe Zhang (Zhang Zhoucai 张轴材), formerly a contributing editor of ISO/IEC 10646, presented to a conference in China a paper that

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1158268917811051292006-09-14T21:25:00.001+01:002011-12-24T14:06:12.527Z

This post really ought to have been Part 3 of a History of Tibetan Encoding in Unicode, but Michael Kaplan's recent posts on the proposed alternative syllabic encoding of Tamil here and here have encouraged me to take a look at the latest twist in the saga of Tibetan encoding before I visit its early history of false starts and lost opportunities. Tibetan is not a difficult script to read or

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1157041543386221822006-08-31T17:12:00.001+01:002011-12-24T14:06:12.528Z

N2985 is a proposal by Michael Everson to encode four additional Tibetan letters that are used for transcribing Urdu or Arabic words when writing the Balti language (nothing to do with curry) : TIBETAN LETTER KKA = Reversed letter KA (U+0F40), transcribing [q] TIBETAN LETTER RRA = Reversed letter RA (U+0F62), transcribing [ɽ] TIBETAN LETTER KHHA = Letter KHA (U+0F41) with an "ear" (U+0F39),

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1156688870658911232006-08-27T15:16:00.001+01:002010-01-06T00:03:35.110Z

A new release of BabelMap which fixes certain problems that may be encountered by users of non-English locales when they select the option to display all styles of fonts. Many thanks to Nocturnal Dreamer for helping me get to the bottom of it all. John Cowan also had some good suggestions for improving the Composite Font Mappings dialog, but I'm afraid that I haven't been able to do anything

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1155998373355500862006-08-19T14:55:00.001+01:002010-01-06T00:02:56.800Z

Having last week discussed Welsh double d, this week I'm going to briefly touch upon Welsh "double l" /ɬ/. In the earliest Welsh texts the /ɬ/ sound was normally written as "l" initially and as "ll" medially and finally, but in most medieval manuscripts /ɬ/ is written as "ll" in all positions, as in modern Welsh. As the /l/ sound was also sometimes written as "ll", in words that in modern Welsh

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1155426540189585162006-08-13T00:34:00.001+01:002010-01-06T00:02:18.488Z

I'm afraid that I'm still obsessing with the finer points of medieval orthography, and so over the next couple of weeks I'm going to discuss a couple of Welsh oddities that I have come across recently. As everyone knows, Welsh "dd" is pronounced /ð/, but what may not be so well known is that it was not always written this way. In medieval Welsh manuscripts, words which in modern Welsh are

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1154252042660512492006-07-30T09:53:00.001+01:002010-01-06T00:01:39.734Z

N3027 ("Proposal to add medievalist characters to the UCS") proposes to encode a wide range of abbreviation letters used in medieval manuscripts and early printed books. At present it is impossible to transcribe into Unicode many early texts as special abbreviation letters are so common, so I am very pleased to see that these letters are finally being encoded. However, there is one proposed

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1153698787787418652006-07-24T00:40:00.002+01:002010-01-06T00:01:08.834Z

Yesterday I gave an overview of the history and usage of r rotunda. Today I will be exploring some of the issues relating to the proposed encoding of r rotunda in ISO/IEC 10646 and Unicode. Encoding R Rotunda As r rotunda is a contextual glyph variant of the lowercase letter 'r' and not a distinct letter with its own semantics, in principle it need not be encoded as a separate character, but

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1153613169523677572006-07-23T00:25:00.007+01:002010-01-06T00:00:41.050Z

Having recently discussed long s (in some detail), I want to turn my attention to r rotunda, in the second of a series of posts related directly or indirectly to the Proposal to add medievalist characters to the UCS (N3027) co-authored by Michael Everson and members of the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI). This is a very important proposal to encode many letters and abbreviations used in

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1153004132590233032006-07-15T23:27:00.001+01:002010-01-06T00:00:04.522Z

Unicode 5.0 was finally released yesterday (although it won't be published in book form until later this year), several months after its original anticipated date of release (see What's New in Unicode 5.0 for a sumary of what's new). This is a small triumph for me as I am responsible for the introduction of one of the new scripts now covered by Unicode, the historic 'Phags-pa script that was used

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1152486745457120142006-07-09T23:59:00.001+01:002010-01-05T23:59:29.727Z

Commenting on the Rules of Long S, Conrad Roth said : I have definitely seen Renaissance English texts (though I can't remember which particular examples) where in a double s the first is long and the second short. I was under the impression that this was the origin of the German Eszett, which looks like a long-s followed by a short-s, though maybe I'm wrong about this. To which Uncle

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1150071370107862782006-06-12T00:54:00.022+01:002011-06-11T13:44:51.051+01:00

In my previous post about the grand old trade of basket-making I included several extracts from some 18th century books, in which I preserved the long s (ſ) as used in the original printed texts. This got me thinking about when to use long s and when not. Like most readers of this blog I realised that long s was used initially and medially, whereas short s was used finally (mirroring Greek

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1149378036140577882006-06-04T00:17:00.002+01:002010-01-05T23:58:32.689Z

One of my favourite books is an anonymous eighteenth century collection of stories entitled The Modern Story Teller ("being a collection of merry, polite, grave, moral, entertaining and improving TALES, related with that modesty so as not to offend the most delicate ear, and at the same time calculated to inspire mirth among all degrees of people, of whatsoever age, sex, or opinion"). According

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1148341375800316472006-05-23T00:14:00.001+01:002010-01-05T23:58:00.886Z

Opening up my newly-arrived copy of ex-Python Terry Jones' book of the BBC 2 TV series, Barbarians, at random on page 29 this morning, I almost choked on my coffee as I read that : Archaeologists have found many thousands of inscriptions in Celtic languages from the years before Julius Caesar. The alphabet used is sometimes Latin, sometimes Greek, and sometimes their own alphabet, called Ogham.

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1146522565663541312006-05-01T23:20:00.001+01:002010-01-05T23:57:32.068Z

Language Hat recently discussed Hobson-Jobson's entry on the outdated English expression chin-chin : CHIN-CHIN . In the "pigeon English" of Chinese ports this signifies 'salutation, compliments,' or 'to salute,' and is much used by Englishmen as slang in such senses. It is a corruption of the Chinese phrase ts'ingts'ing, Pekingese ch'ing-ch'ing, a term of salutation answering to 'thank-you,' '

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1143886858496821032006-04-01T11:14:00.003+01:002010-01-05T23:56:26.898Z

One question that I am frequently asked is why is my web site called BabelStone ? The answer is that it is named after the famous (or rather, not-so famous) 14th century Babel Stone, on which there was supposed to be an inscription in the primordial language that was spoken before the Tower of Babel was built. I first read about it when I was at school, and was just becoming interested in

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1143368301370924432006-03-26T10:39:00.003+01:002011-06-16T23:56:18.571+01:00

As discussed in Part 1 there are some unfortunately misnamed characters, and as discussed in Part 2 Unicode character names once assigned can never be changed, and so misnamed characters are stuck with their names whether they like it or not. Whilst the characters themselves may or may not mind what they are called, characters with wrong names cause untold anguish to some people. Until now there

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1143298673595679562006-03-25T14:56:00.001Z2010-01-05T23:55:13.538Z

As discussed in my post on Good. Bad and Ugly Character Names, there are some Unicode characters with wrong or misleading names. Some people get very worked up about bad character names (or names that they perceive to be bad), and insist that Unicode must change the name. However, for reasons of stability with other standards, which may refer to Unicode characters by name rather than code point,

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1143282099088245932006-03-25T09:53:00.003Z2010-01-05T23:54:44.716Z

The one thing about Unicode that really seems to bug people more than anything else is that the character names are not always perfect, are sometimes misleading, and in a few cases are just plain wrong. All Unicode characters have an official name which is used to uniquely identify them (but see Note 1 below the table). The 71,226 CJK ideographs have algorithmically derived names based on their

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1141504299669540152006-03-04T20:31:00.008Z2010-01-05T23:48:06.021Z

As noted in my post on Tibetan Go, one of the features that sets Tibetan Go apart from the game played elsewhere in East Asia is that Tibetan Go is played on board with a 17 × 17 grid of 289 points, whereas in China, Japan and Korea the game is played on a board with a 19 × 19 grid of 361 points. Tibetan sources suggest that Go has been played in Tibet since at least the time of the first great

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1141504221733221872006-03-04T20:28:00.001Z2011-12-24T14:06:12.529Z

When discussing the French translations of the Tibetan astrological pebble symbols recently, an interesting question was asked : what sort of "pebble" do these symbols represent ? Well, the Tibetan word rdel རྡེལ, although customarily translated into English as "pebble", is a general word for any small, hard, roundish object, including both natural stones and human artifacts. My theory is that

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1140735167901029712006-02-23T22:37:00.001Z2011-12-24T14:06:12.530Z

Michael Kaplan thinks that stacking diacritics up to the ceiling and down to the basement is really cool. I think so too, and was disappointed to find that it doesn't work with the current release of BabelPad. Well, with a couple of tweaks (allowing large line spacing values and centring the output vertically within the space between the previous and next lines), I've got stacking diacritics to

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1139992055280632592006-02-15T08:23:00.001Z2011-12-24T14:06:12.531Z

When it's encoded in Unicode, when it is a CJK Unified Ideograph ... or two CJK ideographs to be precise: U+534D CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-534D 卍 (left-facing or anticlockwise swastika) U+5350 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-5350 卐 (right-facing or clockwise swastika) This comes as a suprise to most people, who do not naturally associate the swastika with the Chinese script. Of course, the swastika is not a

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1135269493016843172005-12-22T16:36:00.001Z2010-01-05T23:45:54.369Z

BabelMap version 1.11.6 has been released today. This release finally updates the French version of BabelMap to reflect Unicode 4.1. The French version of BabelMap not only has a French User Interface, but all the Unicode data (character names, block names, property names, etc.) are also in French. The French translation of Unicode is maintained by Patrick Andries, François Yergeau and Alain

Andrew Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01460418266179540901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18894537.post-1133007268423641412005-11-26T12:07:00.001Z2010-01-05T23:45:16.510Z

Suzanne asked in a comment to How many Unicode characters are there? whether Phoenician is included in the repertoire for Unicode 5.0, which will be coming out next year. The answer is yes. Here are some pages on the Unicode site where you can find out more about what is new for Unicode 5.0 : Proposed New Scripts : the status of proposed new scripts Proposed New Characters : the status of

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