What you see isn't quite what you get (or want!)...

[Gharial]

Why is it that e.g. nciku displays and has available for copying & pasting apparently only "old" (I hesitate to say 'complex/traditional') variants of characters, but not the "new" forms (now I hesitate to quite say 'simplified') established as official typeset in what, the 1960s and that one can see in the nciku stroke-order pop-ups (search there for e.g. gu1, the 'bone' form to see what I mean)?

Sorry if this "specific" question has been asked and answered somewhere before. I'd probably know the answer if I did a lot more learning online and with computers and were more IT-literate. (I've been more into books and printed materials so far, and am only asking about this technical stuff because I'd like to improve my efficiency in compiling materials beyond the slow laborious partial-screen capture then insert-into-doc-and-jiggle-the-jpeg that I've so far been doing for those occassional seemingly hard-to-find simplified forms! One thing I've probably really got to do one day soon is install some sort of Pinyin-to-Character inputting software...I'll of course search the forums here for some recommendations, but if anyone fancies suggesting something right here and now, in addition to answering my original question, I'll sure take it as a welcome bonus! ).

Edited January 12, 2010 at 11:18 PM by Gharial

[Gharial]

Just thought of another, related* question: I was looking at a thread the other day where IIRC somebody asked about the stroke order for gui3 'ghost', but I just can't seem to find that thread now! Does anybody possibly have the link to it? Edit: Found the thread, it was actually 塊 that got asked about, but same difference really!

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/23385-the-character-%e7%b4%ab-11-strokes-or-12

*Related because gui3 is another of those nciku entries that has a form/stroke order, in its stroke-order pop-up, that differs slightly from what is actually available for copying and pasting from the site generally.

Edited January 14, 2010 at 07:12 PM by Gharial
I found the thread...

[thekhanon]

For quick and dirty look ups of characters (when not connected to the internet), I rarely use anything but ZDT. I like that it has the capability to do CEDICT and ADSO (2 different Chinese language dictionaries), and I love that switching between simplified and traditional characters is as easy as clicking a button.

Also, do yourself a favor and install a Chinese IME. Check out this web site for help doing it on Mac OS or Windows. I use Mac OS X 10.5 and use the built in Simplified and Traditional IMEs most of the time. If I have a problem, I use Fun Input Toy.

[renzhe]

I can't replicate your problem. When I view nciku, I can copy and paste all characters, simplified or traditional.

What exactly are you observing?

For pinyin input methods, there are many recommendations on this forum. Google is a popular one.

[Gharial]

Hi, and thanks for the reply, Renzhe. Sorry that my posts weren't very clear (hence the edits!), and I may be overlooking a possible function on the nciku site...but from what use I've made of nciku, it seems that that gui3 say will copy and paste as the 10-stroke more-traditional/Kangxi-like form (essentially composed of 丿+ 田 + 儿 + 厶 ) rather than the more-simplified 9-stroke form (essentially composed of 白+ LONG 丿+ now comparatively "shorter" 乚 + 厶 ) given in the stroke-order pop-up and as shown in e.g. the Oxford Chinese Dictionary. Am I missing something? (For example, there may be a form selector on nciku that I am unaware of).

There seems to be the same sort of "problem" to me with MBDG - the Radicals/strokes lookup page shows the forms I want (in blue), but when I actually select/click on them, the character then available (in black) in the box for copying is subtly different - for example, compare the radical at 0 residual strokes here http://usa.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?cdqrad=194 with what then appears here http://usa.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?cdqchi=%E9%AC%BC , or the radical at 0 here http://usa.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?cdqrad=188 with what then appears here http://usa.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?cdqchi=%E9%AA%A8 .

I'm basically assuming that despite the processes of simplification and government edicts etc (I'm talking decades and decades ago now) that printers should use more modern/simplified fonts, the character software/encoding developers (more recently, for PCs, net applications etc) must be somewhat torn between covering both old/complex/traditional forms and newer/simplified, and therefore fudge a bit and hope that nobody minds. And of course I don't really mind too much, but the sharp-eyed student will soon spot slight discrepancies between stated stroke count and form given, so it will certainly be easier if and when I am a teacher if I can supply forms that are identical with what the student will find in their simplified dictionary chart, index and entries, without me having to go to the bother in supplementary materials of capturing and pasting in little jpegs manually because I want things to match exactly. I mean, does Oxford have some secret software and fonts that nciku and MBDG don't? (Or indeed that e.g. the ABC Dictionary didn't - compare the form of gui3 in the ABC's CASS radical chart with how it appears in the Oxford Chinese Dictionary's radical chart). But like I say, I am coming comparatively late to PCs and at all technical stuff generally, so I could have it all wrong! So again, !

Edited January 13, 2010 at 01:16 AM by Gharial

[Hofmann]

Although some websites do choose typefaces for Chinese, most don't. I know that MDBG specifically chooses SimSun. If you don't have that, something next on the list (There should be a list of typefaces to use in each section of a web page.) will be chosen. I can't access nciku right now. If there are no typefaces in their list, your browser's default typeface for that particular variety of Chinese will be chosen.

[Gharial]

Hi, and thanks also for the reply, Hofmann. The PC I've been using for a while now isn't mine, and for some reason (believe it or not) the browser is still out of the owner's preference IE7, which seems to work best (in fact, work ONLY - otherwise the characters become completely different to what I was expecting and wanting to see) when set to View > Encoding > Unicode (UTF-8 ).

Time for me to insist on throwing the square wheels away and upgrading to round ones, do you think?

[Gharial]

Thanks too Thekanon, I somehow missed your reply before. I'll start checking out the links you've supplied!

[renzhe]

It seems to me that you have a font problem, and are probably missing simplified Chinese fonts and get traditional variants substituted, or even Japanese ones.

All of the links you gave look just fine to me.

[Gharial]

I'm not sure, Renzhe - I mean, I can get e.g. both 讲 and 講 from MBDG, but when I go for something like the gu1 'bone' form, I can only copy and paste the form with the "inside right angle" at the top pointing to the right thus 骨 , which makes a form with 10 strokes, rather than with the right angle pointing to the left (i.e. forming a single heng2zhe2 stroke rather than the individual heng2 + shu4 strokes in the 10-stroke variant) for a total of 9 strokes (but to the left is the form I'd prefer to be using cos it's in the OCD say). But I'll definitely see about installing some fonts or something soon to see if that helps!

[renzhe]

What is preventing you from copying the characters?

Or can you copy them fine, but they look wrong when you paste them somewhere? If so, then where are you pasting them to, that's likely where the wrong fonts are.

I've copied simplified characters from both MDBG and nciku a LOT and I've never had any issues whatsoever.

[Gharial]

Heh, the vast majority of the simplified characters from both sites copy for me just fine, Renzhe - it's only like I say just the very occasional form like the 'bone' or 'ghost' radical-character that doesn't seem available to me at least in a form that matches exactly that given in e.g. the OCD radical chart. (I'm really sorry everyone for writing too generally in my earlier posts in this thread - I should've made it much clearer I am only having "problems" with a couple of forms at most - mainly that pesky 'bone' and 'ghost'!).

The situation seems to me to be analogous to when one wants say the more "fengzikuang"-y variant (which is bracketed in the OCD radical chart) of the 几 radical - I don't think the variant can be found and had (by itself), at least not in a directly copiable-and-pastable form, on sites like nciku and MBDG. Which then necessitates the somewhat laborious manual partial screen captures etc, in my experience.

So I suppose the question I should really now be asking is, has anyone managed to replicate say (the minute details of) the OCD radical chart EXACTLY, and what's more, EASILY?:mrgreen:

Edited January 13, 2010 at 04:09 AM by Gharial

[Kobo-Daishi]

Dear Gharial,

Renzhe is right.

It's a consequence of font.

The Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japanese, and Korean fonts have the character facing right while most mainland Chinese fonts have the character facing left.

They all use the same codepoint so it only shows up while you use the right font.

Whereas the characters 讲 and 講 use two separate codepoints.

That's why they are both able to be shown using the same font.

There were a few other characters that have this same problem but I forget which. I remember a thread at either this or some other Chinese language discussion forum about the subject.

And I don't think it's considered a simplification even though it does have one less stroke. Just a variant made standard on the mainland.

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

[Gharial]

Yeah, I was feeling like I was being a bit loose calling 'em "simplifications". (I shoulda dug out my Binyong and Rohsenow probably..I also have an imprint of a Xinhua that shows most of the slight variants in font, in the form of a chart before the radical index). Anyway, thanks Kobo, glad my wooly terminology and phrasing wasn't too hard to work out! Seems like I gotta tinker with my PC and its settings, software etc then. Any advice regarding the radicals/components of characters (like that fengzikuang), though? Are they actually available in whatever font sets or settings? Or do they need ("still", for the "printer" Gharial Gutenberg here:oops:(sh)) to be manually set in? (Looking at paper dictionaries at least, it sometimes looks like there are certain little bits they must've said to hell with it, and settled for something that looks a bit..."rough and ready"?). Certain strokes at least seemed to be pretty scant if not completely unavailable in my searches online!

By the way, I like the second characters along in the top and middle rows of your piccy thing there.:wink:

Edited January 13, 2010 at 02:54 PM by Gharial