Database and display update
UncleHanzi opened this issue · 0 comments
Data Table Etymology Changes:
I did not change the format of any of the columns.
I did not change the names of any of the columns.
For my current work, I added some columns, but I think I removed all of them for this copy.
Hopefully it will be the same format as the one you last used.
I have drastically modified the content of the Decomposition column. Almost all of the information is in this column in a format that is more understandable to the user.
I tried to ensure the uniqueness of everything in the Simplified column, but Access treats all extension B characters as the same character, so there may be an extension B duplicates. Please be patient and just tell me what they are if you find any.
I tried to ensure the uniqueness of everything in the Traditional column, but Access treats all extension B characters as the same character, so there may be an extension B duplicates. Please be patient and just tell me what they are if you find any.
Webpage Information Display changes:
The information display quite complicated looking and confuses for most people.
I have drastically modified the content of the Decomposition column. Almost all of the information is in this column in a format that is more understandable to the user.
So, the following redundant information should be removed
- Simplification Rule: found in the SimpRule column is frequently not applicable. I have moved all of these rules to the Decomposition column, so it is NOT necessary to display it twice.
- Simplification Rule Clarification: found in the SimpRuleClarification column has also been moved to the Decomposition column so it is NOT necessary to display this information a second time.
- New Font Rule: found in FontRule column is almost never applicable. It is almost always self evident. I still have the information in my database, but it is best NOT to display it. I will move this information to the Decomposition column later.
- Variant Rule: found in VariantRule column is not applicable in most cases, but I have moved the rule into the Decomposition column where it is more readable. I still have the information in my database, but it is best NOT to display it.
- Variant Rule Clarification: found in the VariantClarified column is not applicable in most cases, and if they want to know the clarification, they can look up the meaning of each character independently. I still have the information in my database, but it is best NOT to display it here.
- Applied Rules: found in AppliedRule column. This information has also been moved to the Decomposition column and is NOT necessary to display.
Current Work.
Pre 2000, I made a huge database of ancient character forms, 96,000 ancient forms using data from the best books available in the 1990s. I made a large database, but I did not do any in depth analysis. There were a lot of redundant pictographs, many of them artistically modified, or almost the same. Not actually 96,000 different characters.
Since then I have done in depth analysis on the etymology of the most common 15,000 simplified and traditional characters and have access to much new information from the 2000s and 2010s.
I now have a database (in book form) of all of the pictographic etymological components of modern Chinese with no redundancies. That is a database consisting of detailed explanations of about 2000 basic etymological (ancient character) components.
The explanations are in book form. Most of the components can be explained in a few sentences, like the character for cow, 牛. But some of them such as 昴 require several pages of detailed explanations on astronomy with pictures and graphs and maybe videos.
I hope to publish my book in the next year, but I also hope to put the information on my web site, probably as an extension to what I have now, so they can bring up something like a Wikipedia explanation of all the characters.
Most characters are 形聲字 and are self-exclamatory for the most part if you know the components.