[KS] The Mystery of the Breve

[Michael Rank]

Not being a professional Koreanist (far from it!) I don't want to risk 
my life in the War of the Breves but may I point out that all the 
letters with breves have come out as question marks ? on my computer - 
a Mac - and I believe Frank Hoffmann uses a Mac too!

Michael (keeping head well under parapet...)


> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:39:44 -0400
> From: Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann at koreaweb.ws>
> Subject: Re: [KS] The Mystery of the Breve
> To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
> Message-ID: <20090913163944.zgyrr8x3r4c0wwos at koreaweb.ws>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=UTF-8;	DelSp="Yes";	format="flowed"
>
> Dear Brother Anthony, and others:
>
> Sorry to be so direct, but I feel that THIS should really not anymore
> be one of the points to be discussed on the
> transcription/transliteration issue.
>
> It was done before, but here again the technical basics:
>
> (a) First, the problems listed (mostly limited for non-informed users)
> will go away within the next couple of years, as soon as old and
> outdated software and older computers have been replaced by newer
> script/program versions (of message boards, email software, etc.) and
> operating systems (such as Mac OS X or Windows XP and later). Of
> course, when to replace or update outdated hard- and software is an
> individual choice.
>
> (b) As was pointed out on this list before (by myself and others), the
> "new" (that is 1990s) Unicode fonts that are now standard for Windows
> (starting, I believe, with Windows 2000 or XP, and with Mac OS 9) all
> include br?ves as well as Hanja, Han'g?l, Hiragana, Arabic, Hebrew,
> Tibetan, Bengali, and the alphabets and scripts of many other world
> languages. Just look it up in the Wikipedia:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode or visit the Unicode home page:
> http://unicode.org
> ... QUOTE: "Unicode consists of a repertoire of more than 100,000 
> characters"
> All these characters are in each of the standard new fonts you use --
> say Arial, Times, Palatino, or Courier. However, all of us have most
> likely still other older pre-Unicode fonts installed on our computers,
> and only if you now reformat some text you got from someone else using
> an Unicode font (or reverse), only then will you run into trouble.
>
> (c) You stated that in a Mac environment it is especially difficult to
> type the br?ves. Well, it is not. With an US-English keyboard layout
> (you can freely choose the keyboard layout in the Mac preferences)
> this is what you type (might vary according to chosen keyboard layout):
>
> McCune-R :
>    ? --> ALT + b, then o
>    ? --> ALT + b, then SHIFT + o
>    ? --> ALT + b, then u
>    ? --> ALT + b, then SHIFT + u
>
> Hepburn:
>    ? --> ALT + a, then o
>    ? --> ALT + a, then SHIFT + o
>    ? --> ALT + a, then u
>    ? --> ALT + a, then SHIFT +
>
>
> (d) Web pages using br?ves (or any other characters present in Unicode
> fonts, such as Han'g?l or Chinese Characters): all that the web
> designer needs to do to make this work for ALL newer web browsers
> under any OS is to use UTF-8 encoding -- this is done by inserting
> this line in the header:
> "charset=UTF-8" (instead of, for example, "charset=iso-8859-1" for
> standard older Latin encoding). The problem that Mac users sometimes
> have is that websites in Korean language are often encoded in national
> Korean codes (a problem you see with many Han'g?l sites), not using
> Unicode character sets either but Windows-only fonts -- and THIS is
> rather a problem created by the 'ignorance' of the makers of these
> websites, one that will for sure also disappear rather sooner than
> later. The latest version of the Mac Safari browser, by the way, deals
> quite well with most of these strange setups (not so Firefox).
>
>
> Best wishes,
> Frank
>
>
> ========= q u o t e =========
> (...)
> In addition, we know that any email, blog, or web page into which we
> have inserted such a special character will more often than not (more
> than 50% of the time,  I am told) fail to work when viewed on another
> computer, even using the same browser; the special characters will
> usually be seen as ? or as some kind of blob. Moreover, the text of a
> 500-page book composed on a PC using (say) MSWord, into which we have
> carefully inserted breved characters as above, once it has been sent
> to the editor or printer (not only in the US) will usually be
> transported into a Mac environment. Each breved character, to say
> nothing of apostrophes and the dashes if not hyphens, disappears and
> someone has to go through the entire text, looking at a printout of
> the original,  re-inserting the breved characters etc (which is said
> to be especially tricky on a Mac, I don't know). It is also not
> possible to use the MSWord 'search and replace' function to introduce
> as 'replace' a word with a breved letter.
>
> So my question is: in the light of this set of problems with breved
> letters, which are with us every day and will not be going away any
> time soon, (...)
>
> =============================
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:59:16 -0400
> From: Javier Cha <javiercha at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [KS] The Mystery of the Breve
> To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Message-ID:
> 	<dffd4c960909131359t7ee5a4c0x4071d99501d9d72f at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Just to add to the discussion of typing breved (is that a word?)
> vowels in Windows:
>
> Microsoft Word (the Windows editions) allows direct input of unicode
> characters through conversion from the hexadecimal number to which the
> character is mapped. It is a trick that has served me well for many
> years now.
>
> The hex numbers for the vowels with breve in the MR system are:
>
> ? --> 014f
> ? --> 014e
> ? --> 016d
> ? --> 016c
>
> To try this, open Microsoft Word; type 014f and press Alt+X. Word will
> convert the hex code into the corresponding unicode character, ?.
>
> Unfortunately this function is not implemented in other Windows
> applications. Maybe there are third party tools that allow this kind
> of input but I haven't researched yet. If you use the full version of
> Outlook (not Outlook Express or Windows Mail) you can enable Word as
> the email editor and use this feature.
>
> Javier
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 4:39 PM, Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann at koreaweb.ws> 
> wrote:
>> Dear Brother Anthony, and others:
>>
>> Sorry to be so direct, but I feel that THIS should really not anymore 
>> be one
>> of the points to be discussed on the transcription/transliteration 
>> issue.
>>
>> It was done before, but here again the technical basics:
>>
>> (a) First, the problems listed (mostly limited for non-informed 
>> users) will
>> go away within the next couple of years, as soon as old and outdated
>> software and older computers have been replaced by newer 
>> script/program
>> versions (of message boards, email software, etc.) and operating 
>> systems
>> (such as Mac OS X or Windows XP and later). Of course, when to 
>> replace or
>> update outdated hard- and software is an individual choice.
>>
>> (b) As was pointed out on this list before (by myself and others), 
>> the "new"
>> (that is 1990s) Unicode fonts that are now standard for Windows 
>> (starting, I
>> believe, with Windows 2000 or XP, and with Mac OS 9) all include 
>> br?ves as
>> well as Hanja, Han'g?l, Hiragana, Arabic, Hebrew, Tibetan, Bengali, 
>> and the
>> alphabets and scripts of many other world languages. Just look it up 
>> in the
>> Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode or visit the Unicode 
>> home
>> page: http://unicode.org
>> ... QUOTE: "Unicode consists of a repertoire of more than 100,000
>> characters"
>> All these characters are in each of the standard new fonts you use -- 
>> say
>> Arial, Times, Palatino, or Courier. However, all of us have most 
>> likely
>> still other older pre-Unicode fonts installed on our computers, and 
>> only if
>> you now reformat some text you got from someone else using an Unicode 
>> font
>> (or reverse), only then will you run into trouble.
>>
>> (c) You stated that in a Mac environment it is especially difficult 
>> to type
>> the br?ves. Well, it is not. With an US-English keyboard layout (you 
>> can
>> freely choose the keyboard layout in the Mac preferences) this is 
>> what you
>> type (might vary according to chosen keyboard layout):
>>
>> McCune-R :
>> ?? --> ALT + b, then o
>> ?? --> ALT + b, then SHIFT + o
>> ?? --> ALT + b, then u
>> ?? --> ALT + b, then SHIFT + u
>>
>> Hepburn:
>> ?? --> ALT + a, then o
>> ?? --> ALT + a, then SHIFT + o
>> ?? --> ALT + a, then u
>> ?? --> ALT + a, then SHIFT +
>>
>>
>> (d) Web pages using br?ves (or any other characters present in Unicode
>> fonts, such as Han'g?l or Chinese Characters): all that the web 
>> designer
>> needs to do to make this work for ALL newer web browsers under any OS 
>> is to
>> use UTF-8 encoding -- this is done by inserting this line in the 
>> header:
>> "charset=UTF-8" (instead of, for example, "charset=iso-8859-1" for 
>> standard
>> older Latin encoding). The problem that Mac users sometimes have is 
>> that
>> websites in Korean language are often encoded in national Korean 
>> codes (a
>> problem you see with many Han'g?l sites), not using Unicode character 
>> sets
>> either but Windows-only fonts -- and THIS is rather a problem created 
>> by the
>> 'ignorance' of the makers of these websites, one that will for sure 
>> also
>> disappear rather sooner than later. The latest version of the Mac 
>> Safari
>> browser, by the way, deals quite well with most of these strange 
>> setups (not
>> so Firefox).
>>
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Frank
>>
>>
>> ========= q u o t e =========
>> (...)
>> In addition, we know that any email, blog, or web page into which we 
>> have
>> inserted such a special character will more often than not (more than 
>> 50% of
>> the time, ?I am told) fail to work when viewed on another computer, 
>> even
>> using the same browser; the special characters will usually be seen 
>> as ? or
>> as some kind of blob. Moreover, the text of a 500-page book composed 
>> on a PC
>> using (say) MSWord, into which we have carefully inserted breved 
>> characters
>> as above, once it has been sent to the editor or printer (not only in 
>> the
>> US) will usually be transported into a Mac environment. Each breved
>> character, to say nothing of apostrophes and the dashes if not 
>> hyphens,
>> disappears and someone has to go through the entire text, looking at a
>> printout of the original, ?re-inserting the breved characters etc 
>> (which is
>> said to be especially tricky on a Mac, I don't know). It is also not
>> possible to use the MSWord 'search and replace' function to introduce 
>> as
>> 'replace' a word with a breved letter.
>>
>> So my question is: in the light of this set of problems with breved 
>> letters,
>> which are with us every day and will not be going away any time soon, 
>> (...)
>>
>> =============================
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> End of Koreanstudies Digest, Vol 75, Issue 14
> *********************************************
>