[HN Gopher] An Introduction to Writing Systems and Unicode
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An Introduction to Writing Systems and Unicode
Author : mariuz
Score : 48 points
Date : 2026-03-29 17:43 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (r12a.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (r12a.github.io)
| ks2048 wrote:
| This site has been a gem for a long time for Unicode and
| language-related topics. Just as good to link to the top-level,
|
| https://r12a.github.io/
| mostafah wrote:
| Richard is amazing. I briefly worked with him while
| volunteering on a W3C text layout requirements document. He
| cares deeply about writing systems, and he has been doing so
| much valuable work in this space.
| ovciokko wrote:
| The texts in the images claimed to be Simplified Chinese are not
| really conforming the standard glyph shapes of hanzi as defined
| by the government of China; they look more like the Japanese
| standard shapes of kanji.
| dhosek wrote:
| One of the big complaints about Han-unification in Unicode is
| that simplified and traditional forms share the same code
| points so display of simplified vs traditional is up to the
| font to manage.
| renhanxue wrote:
| That's not really accurate. An overwhelming majority of the
| simplified characters have had their own code points in
| Unicode ever since 1.0. Some more details here:
| https://r12a.github.io/scripts/chinese/
| dhosek wrote:
| That's good to know. I've heard the complaint offered many
| times, but don't have the necessary language skills to know
| otherwise.
| mbrubeck wrote:
| Can you clarify which characters you're talking about? I don't
| see any examples of Japanese-specific kanji in the simplified
| Chinese examples.
|
| For example, the first image uses Gou and Shi forms that are
| found only in simplified Chinese. In both Japanese and
| traditional Chinese, these are written Gou and Shi .
|
| The images also correctly use the Chinese forms of Tong /Tong .
| The Japanese form [0] differs from both and does not appear in
| these images.
|
| Qing as shown in the image is similarly used only in
| simplified Chinese, not Japanese. In Japanese, the traditional
| Chinese form is normally used in handwriting, and an alternate
| form of the Yan radical (different from either of the Chinese
| forms) is often used in printed text.
|
| [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B5%B1#Japanese
| ovciokko wrote:
| Thanks for your reply. I was wrong in that they are using the
| Japanese glyphs. The ones I've noticed are Ci Jiang Ji Hua
| Deng ; I checked again and Ci Ji Hua Deng are actually
| Traditional Chinese glyphs, while Jiang is Japanese glyph.
| It seems that these glyphs are a mix of multiple standards.
| vishnuharidas wrote:
| Also: UTF-8 Playground: https://utf8-playground.netlify.app
| siruwastaken wrote:
| Are there any developments towards font file standards that
| support the theoretical full space of unicode? I've always heard
| that fonts are limited in size to a subset of the true space.
| yorwba wrote:
| It's not a big problem in practice since you can split large
| character sets across multiple files and use multi-font support
| to combine them in the renderer.
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(page generated 2026-04-01 23:00 UTC)