Typing a new Chinese character (a mapping problem?)

[Graham]

If I have managed to create a new Chinese character which is not available in a particular font set, but which is a legitimate character:

1) How do I know which empty glyph I am supposed to use. If I manage to find the right space, is the mapping autoomatic, so I don't need to do anything else. As I know, there are over 50,000 characters, but most font sets go between 8,000 and a maximum of -23,000.

2) For Chinese characters, I use pinyin and tones to type them. I noticed from the properties of other chinese characters in the font set that there are no pinyin or tone mappings, so how does my typing software know how the character is pronounced if I haven't set it (this is particularly so if I have created a new glyph entirely).

Any help much appreciated - Thanks - Graham

[William]

You may perhaps already have the following information. However, in case you do not, or in case it might be useful to other readers, here are some links as to where to find some information about Chinese characters.

The Unicode Consortium publishes the document which is available using the following link.

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.0.0/ch12.pdf

That chapter and other chapters are available from links on the following web page.

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.0.0/

There are links to various code charts available at the following page.

http://www.unicode.org/charts/

I hope that this helps.

William Overington

5 November 2007

[Graham]

That is very helpful - the bigger picture is beginning to fall into place.

Thanks - Graham