Computerization and Traditional Culture

The relationship between computer applications and traditional culture should attract our attention. In addition to the problem of adapting Chinese character input to the masses, there is also the problem of the direction of Chinese character informatization. This paper illustrates, by means of an example of the compilation of the Ten Power Code, the problems faced by the method of inputting Chinese characters into the code and the theory on which the solution is based. The main issues involved are the standardization of the designation and number of components, and the inconvenience of not being able to enter component glyphs into a computer font. The "mnemonic" of components for encoding, the application of associative descriptive methods for Chinese characters, the definition of high-frequency character codes in terms of ligatures, and the methods of encoding and assigning values to different types of Chinese characters, such as numerals, heavenly stems and earthly branches, and interlocking glyphs, are all proposed. Calling for the preservation and promotion of traditional culture and the organic combination of modernization and tradition in the revolution of digitization,

In the past ten years or so, the pioneers of Chinese character coding have analyzed and summarized almost all the combinations of sounds and shapes of Chinese characters with great enthusiasm. However, they have never been able to gain the general recognition of the public, and the code has gone from being "well received" to "unapplauded". Language can be meaningless symbols to professional inputters, and can also be replaced by equivalent numbers. But to the public, language is life and emotion, a synthesis of sound, form and meaning, a whole that can be heard, spoken, read and written.

The input method of Chinese characters is not only the process of processing words, but should also be the process of learning and spreading the culture of Chinese characters. Solving the input method is only the beginning, and the computer application that promotes the traditional Chinese culture is the goal.

Basic Preparation of Chinese Character Coding

The definition of "coding" is: to assign a value to information by a specified code according to certain rules, and to recover the original information according to the opposite rules. Encoding is not a language, nor can it replace a language. From the point of view of language, the basic preparation of Chinese character coding is still insufficient:

First, the parts have no name. Nearly half of the 640 components of the national standard have no customary pronunciation or designation, or although they had a "designation", they are no longer known to the public, and it is not possible to describe the assignment process in a concise natural language.

Secondly, it is only to disassemble but not to link. Chinese people often use two methods to describe and explain Chinese characters, namely, the splitting method of "Mu Zi Li, Bow Chang Zhang" and the borrowing method of "Revolutionary Ge, Body's Body". For the "intersection" structure of Chinese characters, which are not easy to separate and describe, the explanation method of borrowing words and forming words is more often used. However, most of the coding methods for Chinese characters only use the concept of "splitting words".

Thirdly, there is the morphophonetic division. The law of language is "unity of sound and code, reading the sound of the word", and purely symbolic expression is not conducive to communication and memorization.

"Coding" is a product of the industrialized era, which attempts to convert words with uniform rules. Mastering telegraphic codes and even various ciphers is not difficult for professionals. For the general public, it takes time to become proficient, and application is conditional.

Components have no place in computers

Components are the basis of Chinese characters, and they should be essential to the study of Chinese characters. However, it seems that the usefulness of the components has not been emphasized by society.

Components are not installed in microcomputers.

Can the component specification enter the teaching content?

When will the designation of components be resolved?

In December 1997, the national standard for Chinese character parts was announced. More than four years have passed since then, but the "font dot matrix" standard and software products for these components still cannot be found in commercial computers. As a result, it is difficult to discuss characters at the component level on a national scale, from online communication to traditional publishing, including the computerization of characters and the origin of characters.

The component specifications we use include a variety of common and uncommon symbols, the phonetic symbols published by the Peking government in 1918, and the Japanese, Russian, and Greek alphabets, with the deviation that there is no full list of Chinese character components.

Chinese character information products are also a product, and all products should be tested. But the many standards for testing "input methods" that have been developed so far are, in a sense, only meant to constrain those "coders" who want to innovate at will. On the contrary, why is there no standardized and step-by-step progress plan for the informatization of characters, which includes both the fields of language and writing and electronic information? Such a plan should not only be open and expedited, but should also take into account the intersection of multiple disciplines and adapt to the ever-increasing demands of information technology and society.

Informatization is the informatization of society. We have formulated many plans and set up many departments, but we are still trying to solve the problem of informatization in the traditional way of agriculture or industrialization in the habit of thinking, and the lagging behind of parts informatization is a sufficient example.

Components sorting, reducing and increasing the number of categories

In the information age, in order to complete the ideal digitization of Chinese characters, we must also seriously consider the components of the "reduction".

There are thousands of officers in an army, and hundreds of positions, but with 10 or so ranks, you can address any officer, and command a soldier you don't know to fight. For Chinese character parts, shouldn't we also create a more reasonable classification and naming of parts suitable for the information age.

If it is said that because of the periodic table of elements, the names of the elements and the symbol code, the expression of chemical reaction is promoted, so that chemistry from the alchemist and gold-dotting out of the way. Then, in the era of "digital earth", such a large number of Chinese character components still lack a common pronunciation and standard code, can not be considered a "digital" fault?

For pen input using 26 letters, it is necessary to summarize, merge and sort the 560 components. Of course, the summarizing and merging here is not a compression or modification of the pen shape of the parts themselves, but rather like assigning *** the same name and character to similar parts to accomplish "reducing the number and increasing the category".

The term "brush shape" in the "Chinese Character Component Specification" has already been pointed out: the brush shape of the Regular Script Chinese characters can be divided into dozens of types according to the stroke and direction, and the basic types are: horizontal, vertical, apostrophe, point, and fold in five categories.

The author believes that in addition to the "horizontal, vertical, apostrophe, point, and fold", there is at least one more type of brush form that can be added, which is tentatively referred to as the "Hop". In addition to "横竖撇點折", there is at least one more category that can be added to the list, which is tentatively called "合". etc., which do not yet have a designation, can be described by the character "合" and its assignment code "V". In this way, Chinese characters such as "令監以私径" can be easily described and entered.

The first part of a character such as "登", "学", etc., is not used by itself, but is always followed by the other half, or 冖一, which is inconvenient from the point of view of component assignment. Since the meaning of some parts has been lost, is it possible to categorize the parts by "merging" them to make them easier to use and remember?

Parts of the "reduction and increase the class" of the operation, not only to consider the parts of the assignment of the simplicity of human habits of mind; but also to avoid the whole word appears in the assignment of the recode. Therefore, the recovery of parts of the title is not simply the task of text workers, the information community is also incumbent upon the responsibility.

From encoding to auxiliary language

Chinese character input encoding is actually a "divide" between Chinese and Western characters. "The term "division" originates from the ancient correspondence between the states and counties on the earth and certain regions in the sky (Dictionary, page 721), and naturally, the correspondence between Chinese character components and Western characters has a deep cultural connotation.

However, in actual operation, the encoding tends to emphasize only the conversion process of characterization and digitization, neglecting to varying degrees the cultural concepts and human capabilities.

The informatization of Chinese characters is not limited to the traditional "electronic" and "mechanical" processes of equipment and technology. Informatization of Chinese characters also involves upgrading the script theory of the "brush" period, and it cannot be carried out by replacing symbols in accordance with the current norms of modern script application, and it cannot be selected as the norms of the year 2000; nor can it be taken as the norms of the symbols of Chinese character informatization in the way the language was applied in the 1980's. In particular, the restoration of the non-character components of the characters is not an option. In particular, to restore the designation of non-character components, it is necessary to choose the information of the most active period of the components at the beginning of the creation of Chinese characters 3000 years ago as the basis for the symbol assignment of Chinese character informatization.

Naming of components and formation of words by borrowing characters

Through the development of the Ten Power Code, it is believed that one of the most important tasks in the informatization of Chinese characters is to "name and pronounce" the components of Chinese characters, i.e., the "titles" of the components. If the whole process of writing Chinese characters can be described in a simple natural language, the coding of Chinese character input and the rules of "intuitive ordering" of components will be "solved". （

A popular solution for Chinese character input should have the following characteristics:

1, the basic components of Chinese characters used should have standardized titles, common pronunciation or mnemonic sounds;

2, Chinese character codes should be assigned in a synchronous way by using phonetic codes, and keyed according to the sound;

3, the "split character" code should be used to "split characters" and the "intuitive ordering" rules of components should be "solved". The combination of "split characters" and "borrowed character descriptions" or what is called "auxiliary note" (because computer programming is called "auxiliary note");

3. "

4, the use of 1 or 2 characters to assign a value to a part, and the use of simple and clear code rules;

The Ten Power Code, in order to realize a language-based input method, tries to determine 9 pronunciations (mnemonic sounds) and assignment codes for 29 unnamed or unpronounceable parts, which include:

冫 The mnemonic sounds are "spring" (dripping spring), the assigned code is q;

Travel (7th and 8th strokes), the mnemonic is "flag", the assigned code is q;

Jie (3rd and 4th strokes), the mnemonic is "leg", the assigned code is q;

Jie (3rd and 4th strokes), the mnemonic is "leg", the assigned code is q.

The Chinese character for "匚" (3rd and 4th strokes) is "腿", with the code t;

The Chinese character for "匚" (3rd and 4th strokes) is "侧门", with the code cm;

The Chinese characters for "lanky" (lanky) are "剪刀" (scissors), with the code jd;

The Chinese character for "勹", "勹" (勹) is "鱼鱼".

Of course, there can be other options for this kind of "auxiliary sound", the sound of the character is not the main thing, but to make the "parts" easy to remember. It is not the main point, but to make the "parts" easy to memorize. For example, "勹" also has the pronunciation of "包", but we have to solve the balance of the overall code assignment. This is also a problem that should be considered in the future for the assignment of component designations. If the assignment of "component designation" is reasonable, it can be directly used for input coding and teaching of Chinese characters.

5, Define single words such as common connectives and pronouns as single high-frequency characters in the encoding.

Chinese characters are a rhythmic language, alternating single characters with double-byte and multi-byte, and single character connectives and pronouns account for about 7-10% of the characters. Thus, the selection of single-character high-frequency characters encoded with single-character connectives based on the use of component-assisted sounds is an innovation for ease of use.

According to the order of the 26 letters of the alphabet, the high-frequency words are: one, two, and factory it and said in the mouth of the wood such as is on its people on the earth, such as to be with the center.

The parts should be pronounced first, and then given a code according to the sound. You can use a collection of sequences of component readings (commonly known as open mouth sounds) to express the characters formed by these components. For example, the ancient glyph for brigade is a group of people gathered under a fluttering military flag, and its components are read as "方、牛、旗、人", and the sequence of characters assigned to it is naturally formed, i.e., it is written with a phonetic consonant as: fnqr.

Components of Chinese characters with interlocking structures are illustrated by means of loanwords, and the example uses about 150 components. The assignment characters for the components and the component borrowed character phrases are as follows:

Ge (gmm), revolution (gm);

Body (stt), body (st);

Rain (yll), rain (yl), respectively.

The Classification Assignment Method of Ten Force Code

From the point of view of language, there is plurality in both word meanings, and word sounds. People are used to describe the same thing in different ways. For example, different people can call the same person by name, position, title, place of origin, kinship status, cultural level, or even by physical features without misunderstanding. Can't we also use people's language habits to describe Chinese characters with different characteristics? At least, different methods of assigning descriptions can be categorized for Chinese numerals, Tian Gan and Di Zhi Bran symbols, and unnamed and cross weighted components. The completed Ten Power Code divides Chinese character parts into several parts: numerals, heavenly stems and earthly branches, natural sounds, epithets,

self-defined auxiliary sounds, and parts described by borrowing words.

The numerical components are assigned as follows: One A, two B, three (start) association;

Three is read as: three of three and four, five as five of five and six, ten as ten of ten; (eight avoids the Beijing BJ)

The numerals and the assignment codes are as follows:

One A, two B, three SS, four SW, five WL, six LQ, seven QB, eight BA, nine JS and ten SQ

The traditional numerals are similar to the traditional ones. p>Traditional numbers are similar, the first character is repeated once, such as: One AAB Two BBS Pick up SSQ

Ten force code and traditional culture

Sixty years ago, the philosophical founder of China's Neo-Confucianism, Mr. Xiong Shili, sought to revive and restore the national cultural life with a spirit of creativity, vivacious and robust and self-reliant. In order to commemorate Mr. Xiong's contribution to Chinese culture, this auxiliary language was named "Shili Code".

Shengshi Xiuzhi, the reform of China's economic system is in progress, and with the rapid development of information technology, the study of modernization of Chinese culture should be brought to a new height. The input of Chinese characters should be transformed from industrialized symbol processing to the development category of modernization of language and writing to meet the needs of the whole nation and history. Driven by the innovative mechanism, it is urgently hoped that the writing, coding and software professions can be combined to solve not only the input method, but to face the future of Chinese language in the information age.

We should deal with the relationship between tradition and modernization, as well as the relationship between foreign and local cultures. We should make the Chinese national culture adapt to the development of modernization and the requirements of the society and change and renew it, so that the tradition and modernization can reach a dialectical unity. If any brilliant culture fails to adapt to the needs of real life and stops innovating, it will gradually die out due to the exhaustion of its creativity. On the other hand, innovation must also be adapted to the law of human evolution, and tools are only an extension of human ability and should not be a substitute.

Faced with the problems of civilization and culture, tradition and progress, can the "progress" of abandoning traditional cultural heritage be considered our pride? China's long history of culture is the strong cohesive force of the Chinese nation, we have the responsibility to maintain and promote China's traditional culture in the revolution of digitalization, but also to combine modernization and tradition organically, and the use of Chinese characters is the most important component.