Lesson 5: Working with Rare Chinese Characters

Use your PC to Master Japanese and Chinese

Lesson 5: Working with Rare Chinese Characters

Why is this necessary?

In the development of Chinese and Japanese literate culture, the ability of individual Chinese characters to convey meaning encouraged the creation of new characters to convey new meanings. This proliferation got out of way out of hand, resulting in the creation of well over 50,000 Chinese characters, which no one can remember. Efforts to standardize the character set by printed dictionaries effectively reduced the working character set (for those that abided by the dictionaries) to typically between five and ten thousand characters (but not all the same characters). The Japanese went further by reducing the standard character set to under 2000 characters, the general use (joyo) kanji.

Nonetheless, older writing uses characters that are not in any standard symbol set(D- - 7). Because of this, you may need to use characters that are neither in the on-line dictionaries nor in the supplied symbol sets (fonts).

As Chinese characters have become more unified and standardized, the appearances of the characters have changed slightly to become the more modern forms. For special purposes, you may wish to modify the appearance of certain characters in a standard font to suit your taste, or create entirely new symbols for purposes of your own.

Try to Find the Character

The potential need to add a character arises when you cannot find the character or a word in a dictionary while typing. There are two possibilities:

The character exists in the symbol set but not in the dictionary under the key (pronunciation or notes) you typed.
The character does not exist in the symbol set.

The first step is to try to finding the character in the symbol set. If you find it, you need only add a user dictionary(4- 7) entry to access it by pronunciation. Alternatively, you can keep it secret, and enter the character number(D- - 2) directly in the word processor.

Radicals & Strokes

The most straightforward way to find a Chinese character if you know only its appearance is to look it up by radical and stroke. Briefly, Chinese characters can be classified according to their constituent parts. Chinese scholars have determined that all characters contain at least one of 214 unique components, called radicals(D- - 6). Once grouped according to radical, the characters with that radical can be further sorted according to the number of additional strokes(D- - 7) they contain (excluding those used to make the radical). This two-level scheme subdivides the Chinese character set into short lists which can be easily scanned to find a particular character.

Radical & Stroke Dictionaries

Printed (and electronic) radical and stroke(4- 8) dictionaries use this concept to sort characters. The natural ordering of characters by radical and stroke gives rise to the concept of the character number(D- - 2), which is simply the sequence that a particular character ends up in after being sorted first by radical and then by stroke.

Most of the characters in the Smart Characters Combined(4- 9) Japanese and Chinese symbol set are arranged in radical and stroke order for ease of browsing and finding characters. To search for characters in the symbol set:

Select Hanzi/Kanji | Browse to display a page of characters in the current symbol set (the symbol set in effect at the insertion point)

The first 7331 characters in the Level I Combined(4- 9) symbol set are arranged by traditional Chinese radicals. After that, the small ranges of Japanese joyo kanji that are not traditional Chinese characters, user characters(4- 10), JIS Level I kanji, and rare Big Five(D- - 1) characters are in various orders.

Scroll through the font, looking for your character:

Select Previous and Next (or press PageUp and PageDn) to scroll the display. You may also set the Start character number directly.
Note the window title: CombinedMing 0 Chars 16. You are browsing the 16 point CombinedMing Chinese Characters symbol set 0 font. Use File | Open to select the 24 point version CombinedMing 0 Chars 24, or, if you have installed the optional 48 point font, the CombinedMing 0 Chars 48. Leave the display set to the point size(D- - 6) that is easiest for you to read and use, considering your screen resolution and the amount of your desktop you would like the window to occupy.

A quick aside: Smart Characters bitmap scales these characters to display text in a document window. The default point size of 12 multiplied by the standard zoom of 133% yields a font resolution of 16 points, which is exactly the size of the lowest resolution font. Also note that the 16 point font is a simpler style than the 24 and 48 point fonts. This is for clarity and legibility.

Character is There

Although we are not really looking for a character, pretend that you are, and have just spotted it while browsing the symbol set...

There it is! It has been there all along, but you didn't find it under the pronunciation or English glosses you searched for. First, query the character to see what dictionaries entries already exist:

Click once with the mouse or use the Arrow keys to highlight the character. Select Query, or press the Right Mouse button. Examine the list window (now on top), and select an entry for the clipboard, or to paste directly into your working document. If there are no entries, the character is not a Japanese character. Try again.

Add Pronunciation to User Dictionary

Since you did not find the character under your pronunciation, if you wish, add your pronunciation to your user dictionary(4- 7) (make one up for this example):

Because the symbol set view(8- 1) window, like a vocabulary window, is independent of the main frame window, either can be on top and the other covered up, so that you may not always be able to click on it with a mouse. However, you can always press Alt+Tab to switch activation between independent windows. Do so now to switch back to the symbol set view.
Use the mouse or Arrow keys to highlight the character, then select Annotate to invoke the Verify Dictionary or Glossary Entry dialog.

Adding the pronunciation to user characters is complicated by the symbol set index format codes used to indicate that the character is in the user symbol set code space. These codes precede and follow the characters as follows:

If you edit the entry in Characters and Pronunciation entry, you must position the insertion point between the user character index format code(D- - 3) and the Character. You can use the Alt+Right or Left arrow keys for this purpose, positioning the insertion point after the initial format code (which typically displays in the hidden characters window as "Format n0/3"), and typing in pinyin, bpmf, or hiragana. The pronunciation will display above the character.

You can use the hidden characters window (and the codes window) to view the contents of a Smart Characters edit control. In addition, function keys like F2, F9 and F10 work for dictionary lookup, window and line redraw.

Add pronunciation to the Characters and Pronunciation Entry control in the usual way, placing the pronunciation before the character, or in the Prior Pronunciation control. Add glosses separated by a semicolon and a space (e.g., "excitement; joy"), then select OK to add the entry to your active (open) user dictionary. Query the character again to verify your entry.

Creating a New Character

For illustration, assume you do not find the character you are looking for, so you will have to create a new character. There are many ways to do this. One way is to just draw the character from scratch. Another is to find a similar character, and copy it to the Font Clipboard, and modify it. Yet another is to scan it into a Paint program, export it to the Windows clipboard, and import it into Smart Characters. We will demonstrate a straightforward approach.

One Method: an Overview

First locate a place for the new character in your user font(4- 12). Then, locate a similar character, possibly differing in only one part (e.g., the radical). Paste the similar character into the user font to become part of the new character. Edit the new character until it becomes the desired character. Finally, document the new character by adding one or more entries to your user dictionary(4- 7).

Open the User Font

In this example, we will be re-creating a user character that is already in your user font: HAN or itagane

meaning sheet metal, Nelson #4825.

Select File | Add User to display the DefaultUser 1012.Chars 48 point font. Note the example character (#2).

Don't cheat. We will place the new character at the first blank slot, #4 (you can select another location):

Double click the first blank or striped character in the user font, or use the Arrow keys to highlight the character, and select Edit to invoke the Bit Edit dialog. Note that Edit Character | Number control reads the character number(D- - 2) you just clicked. Just to make sure, click the down scroll button a few times, and observe the other characters in the font. Go back to 4.
Erase the edit character by selecting the Erase button, grabbing or dragging the rectangle (although it initially starts out full width) until the rectangle encloses what you want to erase (it can be larger). Click the Erase button again to erase the character.

Copy from a Similar Character

Although you could work with a character at any resolution, it is arguably easier to scale a character down (remove information) than to scale it up (add information).

Select Browse Selects | Alternate to associate the Symbol Set View window with the Alternate Character.
Click the mouse on the symbol set view(8- 1) window menu to activate the window. Select File | Open to switch to the CombinedMing 0.Chars 24 (or the optional 48 point) font.

This character has a hard to draw radical. Find a character with the same radical:

Click the horizontal scroll bar button, and drag it 3/4 of the way to the right. Notice the display of characters with radicals of about 8 strokes(D- - 7). Select Previous and Next or press PageUp or PageDn to locate a character with the correct (metal) radical. We will use #6506 for this example. Scroll that character into view.
Note that #6506 has the correct radical (as do others in this range). Click on the character, and note that the Alternate Character in the Bit Edit dialog displays the character and its number.

Copy from Similar Characters

Select Alternate Character | Paste From to paste the alternate character into the edit character. Erase the right hand portion: select the Erase button, then click and drag the rectangle until it encloses the right hand side of what you want to erase. Select Erase again.
Use the Right Mouse button to erase the fragments left by the erase rectangle, then select Font Clipboard | Copy To to save the radical temporarily.
Try to find the right hand part. This is much harder, it could be anywhere, up to 214 times (actually, no more than 213, because it was not with this radical). Start anywhere you like and try to find it. Don't cheat by reading the next paragraph: cover it up with a piece of paper and don't look...

As you are looking, notice the characters consisting of just numbers. These are obsolete (even more rare than our example), which have been selected for elimination.

Did you find it? This was much harder than most. You can find a character at 9963, read backwards. Scroll the font to that number (3...9) and click it with the mouse to make it the alternate character.
Select Alternate Character | Paste From to paste the alternate character into the edit character. Select the Erase button, then click and drag the rectangle so that it encloses the left hand portion of the overlapped figure. Select Erase again, then clean up with the mouse.

Scaling Parts of a Character

Select Font Clipboard | Swap repeatedly to estimate the amount of overlap (about 3 pixels(D- - 6)). Leave the radical as the font clipboard character, so that we can scale the right portion down to fit.
Select Rectangle and adjust both vertical edges to just fit the right hand side horizontally. Adjust the horizontal edges to fit the character cell. Select Rectangle again and adjust the left vertical edge a few (5) pixels to the left. The new rectangle will be a little smaller than the old one. Select Rectangle a third time to scale the image.
Select Font Clipboard | Paste From to complete the basic character. Select Save to save it, then Yes to save it to all point sizes.

Select Browse Selects | Edit to associate the symbol set view(8- 1) window with the edit character, then use File | Open to locate the other point sizes in your user font and hand tune (clean up) the other scaled versions. Observe the blockiness of scaling up, and the lack of clarity in the scaled down image. Work on each, then compare it with the example character (#2) to get the idea of how glyphs change according to resolutions.

Notice how the 16 point font is far too bold. This is a result of scaling from a 48 point character. You can work on lightening the character, but it is frequently easier to copy from 16 point fonts using the Alternate character set to the 16 point CombinedMing font, because this font has solved the low resolution representation problem in a uniform way and pleasing way.

Document the User Character

Press Alt+Tab to switch back to the Smart Characters main frame window. Verify that your Japanese user dictionary(4- 7) is open, either by checking the Window menu, or Translate | Select Dictionaries. Press Alt+Tab to switch back Bit Map.
Select File | Quit to quit the Bit Edit dialog, then Symbol Set View | File | Open to display the DefaultUser 1012.Chars (any size) font. Click on the new character, then select Annotate.

For single characters without pronunciations, you can add the pronunciation to the "Prior Pronunciation (edit the entry)" field, despite its name, which comes from the fact that the field is ignored if there is any existing pronunciation, and that any pronunciation entered is added to the first character only in a multiple character entry. Neither consideration applies to a single character annotation with no prior pronunciation.

Add the pronunciation and English glosses for HAN, then select OK. Repeat for itagane. These are separate entries, with separate pronunciation keys.

Automatically Registering a Font

Select File | Quit to quit the Symbol Set View window.
On a blank in the working document line, type itagane in hiragana, then press F2 to lookup a word or phrase. Select the character to paste it into the document. Besides the character, you have just added the user font symbol set(D- - 7) to your document.

Manually Registering a Font

Pasting a character from your user symbol set is the easiest way to access user characters in a document: Smart Characters handles all the details. However, you may need to use characters in another symbol set, but don't have a user dictionary(4- 7) with a corresponding entry. The quick way to register a symbol set that is already installed on your computer is to select Format | Symbol Sets to invoke the Pick Symbol Set dialog:

Open a new document that does not have user characters. You can use File | New, or open an existing document.
Select Format | Symbol Sets to invoke the Pick Symbol Set dialog. Set index number 3 User to 1012:DefaultUser.

The Register Symbol Set Dialog

You can also register a symbol set that may not be not installed on your system using the Register Symbol Set dialog:

Open a new document that does not have user characters. You can use File | New, or open an existing document.
Select Format Character to display the Character Format dialog. In the Asian Character Symbol Set group, select the combination box, and press Alt+Down to drop the index of document symbol sets.

Unused symbol set indexes are marked (Unused). Index 3 is the most appropriate index for a user symbol set because user characters from that index can be extracted into a special font called a proxy font(D- - 6), and embedded into your document for electronic transmission.

Select the Register Symbol Set button to invoke the Register Symbol Set dialog, then Select Document Symbol Set Index 3 (Unused) to display the settings for index 3.
Select and change the Unique Symbol Set ID from 0:Combined to 1012:DefaultUser, Text Encoding to sc, and Usage to Ok.
Select Typeface Name, then press Alt+Down to scroll through a list of Asian typefaces. Select DefaultUser.

Note that the typeface name is the same as the symbol set name, a legacy holdover from the Student version 2.9, and a good reason to install your own unique user symbol set that uses a standard typeface name, like CombinedMing.

It is not necessary to enter a File Name or File Type, since the selected symbol set and typeface is already installed on your system (you could select names from a list). Select OK to return to the Character Format dialog.

Verify that symbol set index(4- 10) 3 displays 3 sc 1012:DefaultUser with a clear status (no /x or /?). If you made a mistake, the Open File(3- 1) dialog will appear to help you locate the desired font. Cancel it and check your work in the prior step against the entries in the Hanzi/Kanji | Browse | File Open File dialog listing.

Using the Character in a Document

Switch symbol sets by specifying the symbol set in the Character Format dialog (still open from the last example):

Select From Cursor, then set Asian Character Set to 3 1012 Sc DefaultUser. Characters after the insertion point will be interpreted as characters in the user font (which has only a few characters in it). Select OK to quit the dialog.

Use the character by entering its character number(D- - 2):

Make sure that the input mode warning indicator is not set to The Same(3- 26) (no asterisk). If it is, press Side Asterisk or F12 to turn off The Same mode.
Press Ctrl+R characters code to get into the Chars input mode, then type 4 to enter the user character number. Note the character.

We are done with the user font, so return to the base font, symbol set index(4- 10) 0. There are two ways to do this: from a listing of the symbol set indexes using the Character Format dialog, or directly by entering the appropriate format codes(D- - 3) from the keyboard:

Press Ctrl+]-n-0 (^]n0) to enter the symbol set index(4- 10) number format code for the default directly into the document. Note how quick and easy it is to bypass the menus and dialogs when you know the trick (the code).
Press Ctrl+W to return to Romaji >> Hiragana.

Most people will not need to use this manual procedure, preferring instead to make an initial entry in your user dictionary(4- 7), then letting Smart Characters handle the details for you.

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Last Modified: March 23, 1996