User:Ctxz2323/YES stroke alphabetical order

The YES stroke alphabetical order, also called YES stroke-order sorting, briefly YES order or YES sorting, is a Chinese character sorting method based on a stroke alphabet and stroke orders. It is a simplified stroke-based sorting method which is free of stroke counting and grouping.

YES order has been successfully applied to the indexing of all the characters in Xinhua Character Dictionary and Xiandai Hanyu Word Dictionary. In this joint index the user can look up a Chinese character alphabetically to find its pinyin and Unicode, in addition to the page numbers in the two popular dictionaries.

Stroke alphabet
In the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, the word alphabet is defined as "a set of letters or symbols in a fixed order used for writing a language". The YES "alphabet" is a list of Chinese character strokes in the order of "㇐ ㇕ ㇅ ㇎ ㇡ ㇋ ㇊ ㇍ ㇈ ㇆ ㇇ ㇌ 飞 ㇀ ㇑ ㇗ ㇞ ㇉ ㄣ ㇙ ㇄ ㇟ ㇚ ㇓ ㇜ ㇛ ㇢ ㇔ ㇏ ㇂".

This stroke alphabet is built on the basis of Unicode CJK Strokes and the Standard of Chinese Character Bending Strokes of the GB 13000.1 Character Set. There are totally 30 strokes, sorted by the standard basic strokes order of “heng (橫, 横, 一), ti (提, ㇀), su (豎, 竖, 丨), pie (撇, 丿), dian (點, 点, 丶), na (捺, ㇏)” and the bending points order of “zhe (折), wan (彎, 弯) and gou (鉤, 钩)”.

Stroke order
Chinese characters are written stroke by stroke in a certain order. The standard stroke orders of Taiwan and the China mainland are quite similar. For example, the stroke orders of the different characters in "一二三笔顺排检法 一二三筆順排檢法" (the YES Stroke-order sorting) are 一(一) 二(一一) 三(一一一) 笔(㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇐㇟) 顺(㇓㇑㇑㇐㇓㇑㇕㇓㇔) 排(㇐㇚㇀㇑㇐㇐㇐㇑㇐㇐㇐) 检(㇐㇑㇓㇔㇓㇏㇐㇔㇔㇓㇐) 法(㇔㇔㇀㇐㇑㇐㇜㇔) 筆(㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇔㇕㇐㇐㇐㇐㇑) 順(㇓㇑㇑㇐㇓㇑㇕㇐㇐㇐㇓㇔) 檢(㇐㇑㇓㇔㇓㇏㇐㇑㇕㇐㇑㇕㇐㇓㇔㇓㇔),

where the stroke order of each character is a string of strokes put in brackets. In the rare cases where more than one glyph or stroke order exist for a Chinese character, YES follows the stroke order in the Standard of GB13000.1 Character Set Chinese Character Order (Stroke-Based Order) in its current implementations, because this standard covers all the 20,902 Unicode CJK characters and has a larger user population. Theoretically, any standard of stroke order can be used in YES.

YES sorting
With the knowledge of stroke alphabet and stroke order, the user is now ready to sort (or lookup) Chinese characters and words alphabetically.

Sorting of characters
To arrange two Chinese characters into YES order, the user follows the same rules of Latin alphabetical order. First compare the first strokes of the stroke orders of the two characters. If they are different, arrange the characters according to the strokes' order in the alphabet (for example, "土(㇐㇑㇐)" comes before "日(㇑㇕㇐㇐)", because the initial stroke "㇐" is before initial stroke "㇑" in the alphabet); if the first strokes are the same, compare the second strokes of both sides, and so on, until a pair of strokes that are not the same is found and the Chinese characters are ordered accordingly (for example, "土(㇐㇑㇐)" comes before "木(㇐㇑㇓㇏)" because the third stroke "㇐" precedes "㇓"). If the last stroke of one of the characters is compared and the strokes on both sides are again the same, then the shorter stroke order string comes first (for example, "二(一一)" comes before "三(一一一)".

The YES order of the different characters in "一二三笔顺排检法 一二三筆順排檢法" is: 一(一) 二(一一) 三(一一一) 檢(㇐㇑㇓㇔㇓㇏㇐㇑㇕㇐㇑㇕㇐㇓㇔㇓㇔) 检(㇐㇑㇓㇔㇓㇏㇐㇔㇔㇓㇐) 排(㇐㇚㇀㇑㇐㇐㇐㇑㇐㇐㇐) 筆(㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇔㇕㇐㇐㇐㇐㇑) 笔(㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇐㇟) 順(㇓㇑㇑㇐㇓㇑㇕㇐㇐㇐㇓㇔) 顺(㇓㇑㇑㇐㇓㇑㇕㇓㇔) 法(㇔㇔㇀㇐㇑㇐㇜㇔),

Sorting of words
Words of multiple characters are sorted by their first characters in YES order. If the first characters are the same, then check the second characters, and so on. Non-Chinese characters appear after Chinese characters in alphabetical/Unicode order. For example, 覺 覺醒 觉 觉醒 觉悟 B超 T恤.

Applications
YES order has been applied to the compilation of several books, including
 * 一二三笔顺检字手册 (Handbook of the YES Stroke-Order Sorting for Chinese Characters) (in Chinese, a pocket book of 276 pages with a joint index for all the over 13,000 characters in Xinhua Dictionary and Xiandai Hanyu Cidian)


 * The YES-CEDICT Chinese Dictionary (一二三漢英大詞典, Trial Edition, Sorted by Traditional Chinese, a Chinese-English dictionary of over 110,000 word entries).


 * The YES-CEDICT Chinese Dictionary (一二三汉英大词典, Trial Edition, Sorted by Simplified Chinese, a Chinese-English dictionary of over 110,000 word entries).

In addition, all the 20,902 Unicode CJK Unified Ideographs have also been sorted in YES order.

A few more words
Comparing with traditional stroke-based sorting, the most important features of YES is no stroke counting and grouping is needed.

According to experiment, YES's one-tiered stroke-order sorting is more accurate than the traditional two-tiered stroke-count-stroke-order sorting. For example, in the traditional method, the 9 characters of "夕夊夂久么勺凡丸及" are not sortable, because they are all of 3 strokes and share the same stroke order code of 354 (heng-shu-heng, 横竖横). The YES method can sort them into 6 groups "及/凡丸/勺/夕/夊夂久/么". According to statistics, the code duplicating rate (重码率) of the traditional method on the 20,902 CJK characters set is 10.31%. And in YES order, it is reduced to 2.75%.

According to reference, the Chinese name of the sorting method, i.e. "一二三" (one, two, three), is formed by the first three Chinese characters in YES order (because stroke "一" lies at the top of the alphabet). And the English name "YES" is the acronym of "Yi Er San", which is the Pinyin expression of the Chinese name.