Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants 教育部異體字字典

The Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants (教育部異體字字典) put out by the Republic of China (Taiwan)'s Ministry of Education is an invaluable resource, but, if you do use it use the beta version because the older edition has a lot of errors. Probably because of issues with font.

Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants 教育部異體字字典 (old edition)

Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants 教育部異體字字典 (new trial edition)

For instance, here is the explanation behind the variant character 将 for the more "traditional" 將.

As you can see they've got the wrong character in the explanation behind their research. They've got the character 婔 instead of 将.

There are a lot of these errors in the current edition of the dictionary. I compiled a long list of examples, but, lost them all because of a catastrophic hard disk failure.

So, if you're doing research on character variants, be aware and use the trial version. Though it probably has errors as well. Wonder how many errors are being introduced because of issues with techonology, 

Kobo wrote:
So, if you're doing research on character variants, be aware and use the trial version. Though it probably has errors as well. Wonder how many errors are being introduced because of issues with techonology, 

 I just realized that if you don't have the proper fonts installed 将 will look like either 

The variant that is now the standard on Japan. Or it'll look like this.

This means that the new trial version is going to have a lot of errors because of fonts.

Because if I recall correctly from Ken Lunde book published by O'Reilly on CJKV fonts. When they came up with the encoding scheme they consulted on the codepoints between the various nations and regions that used Chinese characters at one time or another in the various languages. The mainland would use the same codepoints but use "simplified" while the other regions used "traditional" according to their chosen "standard". A core character set for writing. It was only later that they decided to include every character variant under the sun. So they screwed up with the original set. Where the same character codepoint was used for the various variants then in the core set.

Difficult to explain. Anyway, with the Dictionary of Character Variants going for character encoding for the variants instead of graphics, this is going to introduce a whole new variety of error to their dictionary.

 

INTRODUCTION

Hello all! Welcome to my blog, Kobo-Daishi's Adventures in Chinese-Land.

You might remember my previous blog, Kobo's Grotto or something like that, hosted at Yahoo's Geocities.

It was a free site, a part of Yahoo's Geocities. Then they phased out Geocities so the site was removed. I guess they weren't making any money from the sites.

It didn't have much in the way of content.

There was a hack for using the NJStar Chinese Word Processor (the annotation feature) and a copy of an old Chaozhou (Teochew) dialect dictionary from Google's book program that had gone out of copyright and was therefore in the public domain.

When they announced that Geocities was being phased out, the Internet Archive offered to archive the sites of those who wished their sites to be saved.

I hadn't even save a copy for myself.

The site was my first attempt at a blog so I didn't even publicize the site.

I didn't have it added to the Geocities directory, didn't submit it for inclusion in the major search engines by clicking their opt-in button, didn't add my site to my signature at the various forums I frequent, etc.

No web optimization for Kobo.

Anyway, this blog will mainly be stuff that interests me with an emphasis on Chinese language and culture.

There will also occasionally be stuff that interest me that might not necessarily have to do with Chinese.

Something that I've read at a forum or a reaction to something from the media, etc.

I'll try to keep it current.

Chinese is more of a hobby for me and a way for me to get in touch with the heritage of my Chinese ancestors.

I don't get paid for using Chinese or anything so it's not a necessity but I enjoy it.

Mostly I will post on tips that I've accumulated from my decades learning Chinese.

Sometimes my posts will be anecdotal drawn from personal experience but they will also be made generic so as not to be too personal.

I prefer to keep my personal life personal.

My Internet life is for public consumption but I prefer to be anonymous more or less.

That's why the pseudonym.

Kobo-Daishi is more of an artificial construct for me to surf anonymously on the internet.

Hope that you will enjoy this little niche of the Internet that I've carved out.

Kobo-Daishi's Adventures In Chinese-Land. :)