Abstract
HuaXiangXu is a simple and easy to use system for arranging Chinese words. It only requires knowing the order of nine stroke directions to arrange most of the Chinese words into a proper order. The RAW database (References, Artifacts & Words)is able to orderly arrange over 160,000 Chinese words, without overlapping, using HuaXiangXu. In the RAW database the two dimensional structure of Chinese words is converted to a more computer friendly linear format, and with HuaXiangXu, made computer aided word searching a quick and precise task.
The RAW database is composed of three databases. The ‘References’ database holds information on books and publication published in the last two to three hundred years related to Chinese words. Examples are dictionaries and academic publications. These provide information on the form and usage of the Chinese words present today. The ‘Artifacts’ database relates to information on objects passed down from antiquity that have Chinese words on them. These provide information on the age, form and meaning of the Chinese words used in the past. The ‘Words’ database collates the information from these two sources and incorporate the information into the list of Chinese words in the database, information such as pronunciations, stroke sequences, age of the words, Unicode, variant scripts, reference paginations, related word phrases etc. In the course of four thousand years of word development, many Chinese words with similar meaning were created. The RAW database listed over 100,000 such variant forms, and grouped words with similar meaning together in the database to make them useful for future research.
