Subject: Re: (i18n.419) (posix 3411) 3007 IDEOGRAPHIC NUMBER ZERO

From: "Lu Chin (or Lu Qin)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 15:32:19 +0800

NUMATA Toshinori wrote:
> 
> In the message as of Dec 11 19:32,
>        [email-masked] (Keld J|rn Simonsen) writes:
> > A question about U3007 IDEOGRAPHIC NUMBER ZERO: Is this character used
> > as a digit, and how wide is this use, if any?
> 
> In Japan, it is used when expressing numbers of several digits, such as
> 4-digit year numbers and telephone numbers, in vertically written text
> combined with other ideographic numbers.  For example, the first year
> of the 21st century can be written as follows:
> 
>         U4E8C U3007 U3007 U4E00 U5E74
>         two   zero  zero  one   year
> 
> If there are lots of numbers in a document, we can write whole text
> horizontally and use Western-style digits.  For example, most text in
> a Japanese newspaper is written vertically and ideographic numbers are
> used, but the table of stock prices in the same newspaper is written
> horizontally using Western-style digits.
> 

In China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, the character zero is also used in that
way in documents, description of values in bank drafts and checks, etc.
both in vertical forms and horizontal forms.

But it is seldomly used for numerical calculations.

-- 
Dr. Chin LU (Lu, Qin ~{B=GZ~})
Associate Professor
Hanzix Project Director
~{Oc8[VPND4sQ'<FKc;z?FQ'Sk9$3LQ'Q'O5~}
Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong
Tel: 852-2-609-8433, Fax: 852-2-603-5024
Email: [email-masked], http://www.cs.cuhk.hk/~clu