120991 - BIG5 kana support in mozilla.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Internationalization, defect, P2)

Description

[Joe.C]

I've noticed that Moziila didn't support BIG5 Japanese
Kana character(code C6A1-C8D3). However, it is supported
in BIG5HKCS. These character are widely used in BIG5 pages.
CP950 and GLIBC 2.2 support these character well. I'd like
to see it include in next mozilla release. Could you help to add
them to Mozilla?

Comment 1

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

I am going to confirm this bug not because I know the reporter's
claim to be true but because it is true that Big5 tables that I have
seen do not define Kana characters. Neither have I seen CP 950
table that has Kana characters defined. On the other hand, some
definitions of Big5 seem to include Kana characters. For example,
see these pages:

http://www.math.ncu.edu.tw/~shann/Chinese/Big5.html
http://www.math.ncu.edu.tw/~shann/Chinese/Big5-CNS.html

On the other hand, we know that Mozilla's Big5-HKSCS defines
Kana characters.
Of course in this day and age when Japanese language is popular in
Traditional Chinese areas, it is hard to believe there is no way
to handle Kana characters. (GB2312 defines Kana characters.)

Questions to the reporter:

1. Can you provide links to pages which define Kana charaters 
   in Big5? Tell us which organization endoresed this definition.
2. Do you know of a font -- perhaps by TWMOE -- which contains
   these Kana characters? Microsoft fonts for Traditional Chinese do
   not seem to contain Kana characters.

CC'ing ftng and shanjian. 

Comment 2

[Joe.C]

1. I don't know any links now. I'll try find one.

2. The free arphic fonts contain these character.
   You can download them from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/non-gnu/chinese-fonts-truetype/


Also, I've found an old bug related to this
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21209

Comment 3

[Roy Yokoyama]

assigning to i18n manger, ftang, to get implementation 
assessment and priority.

Comment 4

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

Joe and ftang exchanged a mail message on this issue. Let me quote
ftang's reply to Joe here so that we can begin from there:

=== Frank Tang's message, 2002-01-17, sent to Joe and Unicode mailing list ==

The problem is quite complex.
1. The origional BIG5 specification III (Institute for Information Industry) put
together in 1985 (?) does not include these characters.
2. Different vendors encode different characters in this area, not necessary as
what you expected, for example

a. Apple define no characters in this area- see
ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/CHINTRAD.TXT
b. Microsoft define no characters in this area - see
ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/WINDOWS/CP950.TXT
c. one of the mapping table which used to post on ftp.unicode.org by

Glenn Adams <[e-mail]> and John H. Jenkins <[e-mail]>

(John now work for apple) as "Big5"

#
Name:             BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)
#
Unicode version:  1.1
#
Table version:    0.0d3
#
Table format:     Format A
#
Date:             11 February 1994

did encode those area as Japanese Kana
d.
The appendix 7 in the ET user guide I have show those area are defined as circle
numbers instead of Japanese Kana

e. RFC 1922 give some details about this issue in the Appendix A.4 of
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/rfc/rfc1922.html

.4 Big5 (ETen and IBM Version) specific numeric symbols
correspondence to CNS 11643 Plane 1: (Microsoft version defined this area as UDC
- User Defined Character)

    0xC6A1-0xC6BE <-> 0x2621 - 0x263E

Comment 5

[Joe.C]

I've found a link about this area. 
http://www.cbflabs.com/tec/cbflabs/jason2k0914.htm
This page is in Chinese, quote/translated parts from it:
=============
Description: C6A1~C8FE:  C6C0~C6D7 are Chinese characters, (24 codes)
                         C879~C8A4 are Chinese characters, (10 codes)
                         C8D4~C8FE are space. (43 codes, not count as Symbol)
                         C6E7~C7F2 are Japanese Hirakana/Katakana
=============
It didn't mention C6A1~C6E6, C7F3~C878. 
After checking the fonts I have, C6A1~C6E6 are circle numbers, C7F3~C878 are
Russian(?) alphabet.
These days, the Japanese kana is the most frequently used parts in this area.
That why many people (including me) mentioned this as Kana area.

Comment 6

[Frank Tang]

joe, do you use those kana with big5 on Windows ? or Linux? or Mac?

Comment 7

[Frank Tang]

we should go with what MS could support. 

Comment 8

[Frank Tang]

we should have IE parity

Comment 9

[Frank Tang]

nsbeta1- since the work around is using hkscs

Comment 10

[Joe.C]

Yes, I use kana with big5 on Linux and Windows.

Comment 11

[Takeyori Hara]

FYI: 

http://www.din.or.jp/~khoming/nikki/mozdame.html

There is a comment (in Japanese) about Big5 Kana 

Comment 12

[Joe.C]

http://www.linux.org.tw/~majordom/cle-devel/cle-devel.199912/msg00120.html

This email discussing encoding of Arphic TrueType font. Please read this thread.
According to this email, windows mapping 0xC6A1~0xC8E8 to unicode user area.
Maybe mozilla should do the same?

Comment 13

[Julian Missig]

Are there any comments on whether the kana mapping will be done? One of my
friends from Hong Kong uses Mozilla and IE, but she still has to use IE for a
lot of pages because Mozilla doesn't display a lot of pages she vists properly
(due to this "bug").

I realize that this may not be the most theoretically correct way to handle
character sets, but as was said before, this is what people are doing, and it
needs to be supported to display some of the pages out there.

Comment 14

[Joe.C]

I'm using Mozilla 1.5 on Win98 now, seems to be fixed. 
Wonderful, no longer have to change to Big5-HKSCS to see those kanas.

Comment 15

[Julian Missig]

Yeah, as far as I can tell, this has been fixed.

Comment 16

[Frank Tang]

what a hack. I have not touch mozilla code for 2 years. I didn't read these bugs
for 2 years. And they are still there. Just close them as won't fix to clean up.

Comment 17

[Travis Chase]

Mass Re-open of Frank Tangs Won't fix debacle. Spam is his responsibility not my own

Comment 18

[Travis Chase]

Mass Re-assinging Frank Tangs old bugs that he closed won't fix and had to be
re-open. Spam is his fault not my own