CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

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CHAPTER 1

CJKV Information Processing Overview

Here I begin this book by stating that a lot of mystique and intrigue surrounds how

CJKV—Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese—text is handled on computer sys-

tems, ranging from handheld mobile devices to mainframe computers. Although I agree

with there being sucient intrigue, there is far too much mystery in my opinion and ex-

perience. Much of this is due to a lack of information, or perhaps simply due to a lack of

information written in a language other than Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese.

Nevertheless, many ne folks, such as you, the reader of this book, would like to know

how this all works. To conrm some of your worst fears and speculations, CJKV text does

require special handling on computer systems. However, it should not be very mysterious

aer having read this book. In my experience, you merely need to break the so-called one-

byte-equals-one-character barrier—most CJKV characters are represented by more than a

single byte (or, to put it in another way, more than eight bits).

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English information processing was a reality soon aer the introduction of early computer

systems, which were rst developed in England and the United States. Adapting soware

to handle more complex scripts, such as those used to represent CJKV text, is a more re-

cent phenomenon. is adaptation developed in various ...