Korean language and computers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Character encodings
2 Text input
3 Hanja
4 Special situations
5 Programs
6 See also
7 References

[edit] Character encodings

Computers represent the Korean language in a variety of ways.

In Request for Comment 1577 (RFC1577), a method known as ISO-2022-KR for encoding Korean characters in emails was described.

The international Unicode standard contains special characters for representing the Korean language in the native Hangul phonetic system. There are two ways supported by Unicode. The way used by Windows is to have every one of the 11,571 syllable combinations as a code and a pre-formed font character. The other way is to encode jamos, and to let the software combine them into correct combinations, which is not supported in Windows. Of course the former way needs more font memory, but gives the possibility of getting better shapes, since it is complicated to create fully correct combinations. With a word processor, one generally wants to be able to create stylistically correct texts.

There is also the possibility of simply stacking a (sequence of) medial(s) (jungseong) – and then a (sequence of) final(s) (jongseong) and/or a Middle Korean pitch mark, if needed – on top of the (sequence of) initial(s) (choseong), if the font has medial and final jamos with zero-width spacing that are inserted to the left of the cursor or caret, thus appearing in the right place below or to the right of the initial. If a syllable has a horizontal medial (ㅗ, ㅛ, ㅜ, ㅠ or ㅡ), the initial will probably appear further left in a complete syllable than is the case in pre-formed syllables due to the space that must be reserved for a vertical medial, giving an aesthetically poor appearance to what may be the only way to display Middle Korean Hangul text without resorting to images, romanisation, replacement of obsolete jamo or non-standard encodings. However, most current fonts do not support this.

The Unicode standard also has attempted, with some controversy, to create a unified CJK character set that can represent Chinese (Hanja) as well as the Japanese (Kanji) and Korean (Hangul) derivatives of this script through the Han unification process.

See also: EUC-KR

[edit] Text input

On a Korean computer keyboard, text is typically entered by simply pushing a key for the appropriate Jamo; the operating system creates each composite character on the fly. Double consonants are entered in tandem with the shift button. The user can then select and convert to Hanja or other special characters using a keyboard shortcut or interface button, although some programs may interfere with this. Subsequent semi-automated hanja conversion is supported to varying degrees in word processors.

When using a keyboard from another language, most operating systems require the user to type using an original Korean keyboard layout, the most common of which is 2[du]-beolsik. This is in contrast to some other languages like Japanese, where text can be entered using a Romanization system on non-native keyboards.

See also: Input method editor, List of input methods for UNIX platforms, and Chinese input methods for computers

[edit] Hanja

Apart from the conversion issues mentioned above, some Korean fonts do not even include hanja. At the same time, current word processors do not allow the user to specify which font to use as a fallback for any hanja that may occur in a text. Thus, each sequence of hanja must be manually formatted to appear in the desired font.

[edit] Special situations

Having text run in vertical lines is poorly or not at all supported by HTML and most word processors, although this is not an issue for modern Korean, as it is usually written horizontally. Until the second half of the 20th century, however, Korean was often written vertically. The earlier language had pitch marks to the left of syllables, which are included in Unicode, although most current fonts do not support this properly, either.

See the section on #Character encodings above for obsolete jamo.

[edit] Programs

Notable programs specifically designed for Korean language-related use include:

Language recognition
- A North Korean speech recognition program is said to recognise 100,000 words and to achieve a success rate of more than 90%.^[1]
- Mongran (목란; KCC^[2], North Korea) – Optical character recognition software with an alleged success rate of 99% for printed text and 95% for handwriting recognition.^[1]
Input method editors
- Tan'gun (단군; Pyongyang Information Center, North Korea) – Allows the use of hangul on English editions of Windows.^[2]
Word processors – All programs listed below include domestic hangul fonts, non-hangul fonts and a hangul↔hanja conversion utility.
- Hangul (Haansoft Corporation, South Korea)
- Ch'angdŏk (창덕; PIC,^[2] North Korea) – This popular program exists in a MS-DOS version developed in April 1990[1] and a Windows version developed in 1996.^[3] It includes a peculiar personality cult feature by which pressing Ctrl+I or Ctrl+J produces titles exalting Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, respectively.^[4]