[tlug] SCML: A Structural Representation for Chinese Characters

[Niels Kobschätzki <n.kobschaetzki@example.com>]

Hi!

Just found this paper and it's quite interesting:

SCML: A Structural Representation for Chinese Characters
Abstract:
 Chinese characters are used daily by well over a billion people.  
They constitute the main writing system of China and Taiwan, form a  
major part of written Japanese, and are also used in South Korea.  
Anything more than a cursory glance at these characters will reveal a  
high degree of structure to them, but computing systems do not  
currently have a means to operate on this structure. Existing  
character databases and dictionaries treat them as numerical code  
points, and associate with them additional `hand-computed' data, such  
as stroke count, stroke order, and other information to aid in  
specific searches. Searching by a character's `shape' is effectively  
impossible in these systems.
I propose a new approach to representing these characters, through an  
XML-based language called SCML. This language, by encoding an abstract  
form of a character, allows the direct retrieval of important  
information such as stroke count and stroke order, and permits useful  
but previously impossible automated analysis of characters. In  
addition, the system allows the design of a view that takes abstract  
SCML representations as character models and outputs glyphs based on  
an aesthetic, facilitating the creation of `meta-fonts' for Chinese  
characters. Finally, through the creation of a specialized database,  
SCML allows for efficient structural character queries to be performed  
against the body of inserted characters, thus allowing people to  
search by the most obvious of a character's characteristics: its shape.

File: ftp://ftp.cs.dartmouth.edu/TR/TR2007-592.pdf

Niels