Chinese characters description languages

The Chinese characters description languages are several proposed languages to most accurately and completely describe Chinese (or CJKV) characters and information such their list of components, list of strokes (basic and complex), their order, and the localization of each of them on a background empty square. Work on this is currently led by the CDL of the Wenlin Institute, the SCML, and the Hanglyph languages. They are an answer to the limits of a bitmap description, and to the need for indexing tens of thousands of rare character variants. They all aim to work for Kaishu style and Song style.

The CDL from Wenlin

Chinese character Description Language is a font technology, based on XML, co-created by Tom Bishop and Richard Cook for the Wenlin Institute, designed for describing any CJK character, but suitable for describing any glyph.

This XML based "language" actually set the stroke order and which CJK stroke is use in each character they already described. The background is look like a square of 128px hight and large, in this background :
# each kind of stroke is draw in SVG (more than 50 strokes);
# a basic component is composed by calling several strokes. In this component, each stroke is describe by its bottom-left and top-right corner. Transformations are possible (reduction, enlargement, etc.). There are more than 1.000 basic components.
# a character is composed by calling several components. In this character, each component is describe by its bottom-left and top-right corner. Transformations are possible (reduction, enlargement, etc.)Accordingly, a set of 50 strokes allow to construct a set of 1.000 components which allow to construct tens of thousands characters' descriptions. A change in the shape of one of the 50 basic stroke will be instantly visible on all other character including it.

T. Bishop and R. Cook explain this by the words ::"The stroke count of one character is generally related to the stroke counts of other characters. Most characters are built from components, and as long as the stroke counts of those components are defined, there is rarely any difficulty in adding them together to obtain the combined stroke count. Therefore, if a standard defines the strokes of a few thousand characters, it implicitly defines the strokes of many thousands of additional characters." [ [http://www.wenlin.com/cdl/cdl_spec_2003_10_31.pdf Specification for CDL] [Bishop & Cook] , see note n⁰12, p.8. (PDF, 2003-10-31)]

SCML

Another XML based Chinese character Description Language.

HanGlyph

Another Chinese character Description Language.

Links

;CDL language from Wenlin Institute
* [http://www.wenlin.com/cdl/ CDL specification] by Bishop and Cook.
* [http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~rscook/bishop/NEH-CDL.pdf Digital Humanities Start-up Grant from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities]

;SCML
* [ftp://ftp.cs.dartmouth.edu/TR/TR2007-592.pdf SCML: A Structural Representation for Chinese Characters] , Daniel G. Peebles, Advisor: Devin Balkcom, May 29, 2007, Dartmouth College, Technical Report TR2007-592. 30 pages.

;HanGlyph
* [http://www.hanglyph.com/en/hanglyph-index.shtml HanGlyph — a Chinese Character Description Language - Presentation] , from Hanglyph.com
* [http://www.hanglyph.com/en/hanglyph/reference.pdf HanGlyph — a Chinese Character Description Language - Reference Manual] , 13 sept. 2003, 31 pages.

Notes