Riding the wind of rebirth

"However, for building information fonts, allowing the program to recognize character roots will greatly improve our efficiency."

"I see." Leng Yulong nodded: "Then let's go back to "Sea of ​​Words"."

"Chinese characters have different glyphs, old and new, so in "Sea of ​​Characters", we still use the new glyphs for the prefixes; while prefixes other than those in the "General Chinese Character Form Table for Printing" are organized according to the principles of the table;"

"Is that equivalent to producing a new "Printing Common Chinese Character Glyph Table" with a wider scope?" Zhou Zhi asked.

"Yes." Wei Yixin nodded: "But your radical method is more scientific, so there is no need to use it again."

Leng Yulong also nodded in approval: "After the prefixes of traditional Chinese characters in "Zi Hai", there are also corresponding simplified characters, and the scope of simplified characters is limited to the "General List of Simplified Characters"."

"The phonetic notation of "Zi Hai" uses Chinese pinyin letters, followed by the straight pronunciation. The straight pronunciation is based on modern pronunciation;"

"The pronunciation of polyphonic words is arranged in the order of common phonetic items first, and uncommon phonetic items last. The pronunciations of words that cannot be judged as common or unusual are arranged in order of the times of citation." Wei Yixin added: "Words with different pronunciations are arranged in the order The Mandarin Phonetic Approval Committee reviews the pronunciation for annotation. Dialect words are notated according to the pronunciation rules between dialects and Mandarin or the actual pronunciation."

"That's pretty much it, right?" Leng Yulong asked, "The definition part of the dictionary has nothing to do with the characters. Do we still need to talk about it?"

"Say, I'm also learning." Zhou Zhi listened with pleasure. This was the first time he knew how to compile a "Dictionary", especially the interpretation part, which had nothing to do with the compilation of the lexicon, so his interest became even more intense.

Leng Yulong was very satisfied with Zhou Zhi's studious spirit and said with a smile: "In terms of interpretation, let's first interpret the original meaning and then expand on the extended meaning."

"For variant characters, simplified characters, two simplified characters, and incorrect characters, there is no separate explanation or phonetic notation, but it means 'the same as 'some'', 'the simplified character of 'some'', 'has been the simplified character of 'some''" , then stop using ',' 'the wrong word for ', etc., and at the same time, the source must be indicated in the form of 'see' or 'word see'."

"The characters are made into character cards using regular script and official script, and a total of 85568 Chinese characters are included. There are a total of eleven sources based on the main character collection." Wei Yixin said:
"The first is the Chinese characters collected in dictionaries of the past dynasties, such as Shuowen, Yupian, Guangyun, Jiyun, Kangxi Dictionary and other books."

"The second is Chinese characters that have not been included in dictionaries of the past dynasties but are found in literature and classics."

"The third is all the simplified characters in the "General List of Simplified Characters" promulgated by the National Language Working Committee."

"Fourth is the official script that is relatively recognized by the academic community in oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, bamboo slips, and silk scripts."

"The fifth is the variant characters found in the inscriptions of past dynasties. Of course, we generally do not accept corrupted characters except for single characters."

"Sixth are dialect words in local literature and dialect dictionaries."

"Seven is a new word for science and technology that emerged in modern times."

"Eighth are the names of people and places that are still in use today."

"Nine are analogous simplified characters that appear in today's publications and are beyond the scope of the "General List of Simplified Characters."

"Ten is the Chinese character in the "Second Draft Chinese Character Simplification Plan" published by the Chinese Character Reform Committee in [-]."

"Finally, there are Chinese characters popular in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Chinese characters used in Japan, South Korea, Singapore and other countries will also be included in this book."

Leng Yulong added: "In addition, in order to fully reflect the actual situation of Chinese characters, "Chinese Character Ocean" also considers the old and new strokes and incorrect characters in the literature of the past dynasties."

"For the standards for collecting characters in this part, we adopt the rule of 'lenient for single characters and strict for combined characters'. Generally, single characters should be included as much as possible, and combined characters should not be included as much as possible." "There is also the last part of the work, which is in the process of sorting out Cleaning up." Wei Yixin said: ""Chinese Character Sea" has carried out some cleaning and merging work in terms of variant characters and incorrect characters that were not covered by the previous calligraphy book. In the interpretation, try to find the explanations and explanations in many classics as much as possible, Combined under the definition of one word.”

"For example, the word (wooden boat), "Hanyu Dictionary Supplementary Wood Part": "(wooden boat), the name of the tree." Volume 770 of "Taiping Yulan" quoted Zhou Chu's "Fengtu Ji": Preliminary chapter (wooden boat) of various trees, They are all composed of many twists and turns to form strong strength.' However, there is no phonetic notation."

"The "Sea of ​​Words" combines some research and interpretation results after the publication of the "Chinese Dictionary" and interprets it as: "(wooden boat), the same as 'nan'.See "Dragon Shrine". "

"Similar to this kind of supplementary research results, we will also add them to the interpretation of the word (wooden boat) in "Zihai"."

"In addition to our own failure to verify the exact "Supplement" part, "Sea of ​​Words" actually contains a total of 87019 Chinese characters."

"It's amazing." Zhou Zhi couldn't help but sigh: "Didn't this accomplish all the work we had to do?"

"To save some face." Gu Kailai couldn't help rolling her eyes: "What do you mean the job you want to do?"

"The search range of the two senior brothers has covered almost everything we can imagine." Zhou Zhi was so happy that he couldn't help but said: "It is better to use regular script to create the card. I guess the problem of automatic program scanning and recognition should not be big."

"Then let's go and have a look at the warehouse first." Leng Yulong was even more anxious than Zhou Zhi: "If we can use it together, it will be a big bargain. We can put the publication of "Sea of ​​Words" on the schedule as soon as possible!"

"Well, once the feasibility is confirmed, we will go to Professor Li Guojie to compete in the ring!"

"Professor Li Guojie?" Wei Yixin searched for the philology masters he knew. It seemed that there was no such person. He turned to Leng Yulong and asked: "Leng Quan, have you heard of this person?"

Seeing Wei Yixin's misunderstanding, Zhou Zhi just smiled and said: "Professor Li Guojie is the head of Shuguang Supercomputing Center. We wanted some computing resources before, but Professor Guojie is so stingy... This time we came to him and blocked him from competing in the ring. !”

In several reference rooms of the Chinese Department of Peking University, more than eight years of hard work by Leng Yulong and Wei Yixin lie quietly here.

The entire data room is divided into more than 200 parts, which are classified into file cabinets according to the prefix index method of "Chinese Character Ocean".

There are several cardboard boxes in each cabinet. Inside the boxes are file bags, and inside are stacks of cardboard cards.

For those who are used to flipping through dictionaries, each card is actually the word and annotation area of ​​a text in the dictionary.

In the upper left corner of the card is a standard Datian character grid, with regular script written there, followed by pinyin, phonetic notation, explanations, excerpts from literature and other "general categories".

All the information in several large rooms were laid out page by page, and photocopies were reduced to form a "Sea of ​​Chinese Characters".

In other words, the future "Sea of ​​Chinese Characters" will be enlarged and cropped to contain the information of these major houses.

"It should be no problem." Zhou Zhi looked at the meticulous calligraphy cards and couldn't help but admire him: "Even the size and writing method of punctuation are standardized. Every comma is almost exactly the same..."

"This is an old tradition in the family. The comma needs to be divided into upper and lower parts according to the '日' character grid. The upper part is circular, the circumference of the circle is tangent to the '日' character grid frame, and the diagonal arc stroke must be thick. The tail is thin, the head starts from the right tangent point between the circle and the sun grid, the width accounts for one-eighth of the circumference, then narrows and draws an arc, and the tip of the pen ends at the lower left side of the sun grid." Wei Yixin said with a smile: "Of course there are rules. .”

"Every time comes, heaven and earth have the same destiny." Zhou Zhi was overjoyed: "Confirmed, a teacher taught it! The same is true for the vectorization rules of commas in Hanwen Library!"