The Computer Description of Chinese Character Form System Taking Seal Script Explained in 'ShuowenJiezi' for Example

摘要

Chinese is the representative of ideographic system of writing, but it meets a major problem in computer information processing, namely the problem of the mass encoding set. The elements of phonetic systems “are sometimes syllabic, and sometimes alphabetic, i.e. based on the irreducible elements used in speaking”, while, the elements of Chinese characters are components. This paper uses the mathematical model of tree to describe the form of Chinese characters in computer, and implements computer description of all characters explained in "Shuowen Jiezi", a wordbook of Chinese seal script written some 2000 years ago. In addition to the automatic analysis of Chinese character forms by computer, this kind of description also provides some statistic analysis to explain the systematic formation of Chinese characters, and compare the systemic differences among Chinese scripts, like seal script and standard script, in different times.