CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

Ideograph Dictionaries

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Needless to say, conventional dictionaries are most useful to the student or scholar of a

language, but specialized dictionaries are a valuable resource for the computer user and

soware developer, and typically contain entries for all the ideographs in one or more

CJKV character set standards, such as GB 2312-80 or GB/T 12345-90 for Chinese. One

of the largest conventional ideograph dictionaries was published in Japan. It is entitled

󰇦 (dai kanwa jiten), contains 50,294 kanji, and is published as a 13-volume

set.

Dictionaries that include the encoded value of ideographs prove their usefulness when

you are trying to input a particular ideograph, and the input method that you are using

simply doesn’t seem to know it exists. Mind you, there are ideographs that are not in-

cluded in any CJKV character set standard, but those ideographs are not frequently used.

ere are many ideographs, such as those enumerated in JIS X 0208:1997 Level 2 kanji

and GB 2312-80 Level 2 hanzi, that typically cannot be input by reading. e user must

nally resort to unintuitive means, such as input by encoded value, which is also known

as code input.

Most input methods provide a mechanism for code input, and come with character ta-

bles—printed or available in soware—arranged by encoded value. e usefulness of these

character tables is very limited. Remember that GB 2312-80 ...