2009-10-10
[Mirrored from http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2009/10/modest-proposal-to-encode-ultra.html]
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 ultra-simplificationists like myself to communicate electronically in our preferred form of writing. As it does not look as if China is in any hurry to propose them for encoding, I have put together a modest proposal to encode the 257 outstanding second stage simplifications from 1977, as well as 23 unencoded Singapore simplifications from 1969, and 55 unencoded "first batch" simplifications from 1935. This document is available as a 112 page 10MB PDF from the WG2 document register (N3695) or in its original html format from my web site. NB If you are going to view the html source file then you should first install my BabelStone Han font (details here), otherwise the document will make little sense. Unfortunately, WG2 delegates CJK encoding matters to its Ideographic Rapporteur Group (IRG) which I understand does not accept submissions from individuals, so unless China or Unicode adopts my proposal it is not likely to get anywhere very fast.