Re: Is there anybody interested in supporting GB18030 in debian?
On Sun, 21 Jan 2001, ha shao wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 21, 2001 at 03:54:09AM -0700, rigel863@yahoo.com wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 21, 2001 at 06:17:32PM +0800, ha shao wrote:
> > Normally standard organizations (international, national or industrial)
> > do not publish their standards for free. That's why you can rarely find
> > any formal standard on internet. You should be able to buy the published
> > gb18030 standard from "the publisher of China standards".
>
> Yes, but... It is China and it's a national standard. They are
> paid by the government funding. As a Chinese, I really hope
> that the archivement of any government funded researches should
> be free to use for at least China citizens... okey, when national
> security related matter are not included. anyway, the standard
> is not from some non-profit organization. The work is paid
> by the government and the government is paid by the people.
> And it is internet era. The original work should be in electronic
> form. It's not like put a electronic copy will really a big cost.
>
> Now, even unicode 3.1 is online. It used to cost a bundle.
That should say "3.0", but I get your point. US $50 is a lot of money.
(Actually, the Unicode 2.0 book was about US $62, and not even hardcover!
But I think the paper was better.)
But US $50 is nothing compared to the several hundred dollars (!) that ISO
was charging for their ISO 10646 standards, and you get even less
information--mostly just pictures of the glyphs, and the bulk of
them are the CJK ones. The Unicode book has more informative text to
read. Plus I can get the Unicode book from a regular bookstore or Amazon,
without having to deal with Switzerland (iso.ch) or whatever one's local
national standards organization is as a middleman.
No wonder Unicode has had more influence and effect over people.
(For several hundred dollars, I'd rather buy the _Hanyu Da Zidian_, which
is about US $300 from usipusa.com for an 8. vol hardcover fanti edition on
nice paper--yes, I did buy it last year. :) Or perhaps a Taiwan printing
of Morohashi, or even the real thing from Japan if I ever save up
enough... Then I can read about what all those CJK glyphs are!)
ISO has since dropped their prices, but its still more expensive.
There's a cd-rom PDF version now too (also more expensive), but poorly put
together.
Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu
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