Hi, has the Skritter writing of the right hand side of 極 changed? I think the 了-shaped part isn't quite right and I don't remember seeing in this form before.

Edit: I just tested the character on Japanese Skritter and there it's written the way I remember it.

Yes. Noticed this too. But change is good, right? :)

This character has been changed recently to be more compliant with handwritten style, though I don't know much about Chinese so I can't back whether this is an accurate change. Does anyone have any more thoughts on this?

I'll ask my 小美人to write the stroke order for it and get back to you asap! =)

The Taiwanese Ministry of Education uses the old way of writing, as you can see here:

http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/characterQueryResult.do?word=極

So I'd prefer it this way. Can you change it back, please?

It's not about stroke order. Traditionally, it is a 丂. The mainland changed it to 了. It's a "modified" traditional character.

Any news on this?

Normally I would not have had this changed, but a user reported that the existing writing was inconsistent with the font rendered in the header of the iOS app (as can be seen in the screenshot below), which would confuse many new learners.

I also have two other reasons to back up our decision, the first of which being that the form we've changed it to is the official 楷体, or standard script; and the second being that pretty much all websites (including that of Taiwanese Ministry of Education dictionary) render to this "newer" version by default.

Were there a separate Unicode entry for this character, I would be more than happy to allow both, but alas--there is not. I'm sorry if this disappoints you, Schnabelhund, but we have to take a pretty utilitarian approach to the visuals of the app. We can't control how devices render fonts outside of the canvas, and have to take this into account when deciding what users are required to write.

http://goo.gl/KcH52C

Sorry Evan, I must say I strongly disagree with your decision.

"I also have two other reasons to back up our decision, the first of which being that the form we've changed it to is the official 楷体, or standard script;"

What on Earth is the 'official' 楷体? The official 教育部標準楷書 clearly shows the variant with 丂 in it, as you can see on the MOE website I provided a link to above:

http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/characterQueryResult.do?word=極

So do many other Kaiti fonts, e.g. the AR PL Kaiti fonts (in TW, HK, and even CN variations). The character can be seen in the old writing in all my traditional textbooks including my Cantonese textbook from HK.

It's just that the Kaiti you've chosen happens to render it with a 了, but that doesn't make it the proper way of writing. I'm appealing to authority on this one; TW-MOE knows best; at least for traditional characters.

"and the second being that pretty much all websites (including that of Taiwanese Ministry of Education dictionary) render to this "newer" version by default."

I'm pretty sure it has to do with the font you're using in your browser. See how it looks like on my screen:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/77841672/ji2.png

Sorry I'm so defensive about the proper way of traditional writing, but we as traditional learners already have to Skritter simplified characters where the traditional variant has to share a unicode point with the simplified. Depending on the school or the teacher, this also means point deduction when we write 骨, 鬼, or many many other characters the Skritter way. Well, OK, Skritter has more learners of simplified Chinese. I get it. In these cases I'll just remember how they're written traditionally and I'll be fine for the most part.

But it really really bugs me that we can't even write a *traditional* character the traditional way, and for what reason? Because the iOS app doesn't render it the proper way outside of the canvas? No, sorry, it's really hard to accept this.

@ Evan The style sheet of the TW MOE dictionary (http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/dict.css ) specifies the font 標楷體 (DBKai-SB) for displaying its contents. If you are not using that font, you are not looking at the correct character. Please check that dictionary again after you have properly set up your browser to use 標楷體 for that site.

After reading this description about 標楷體 from http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/標楷體, “台灣的公文書幾乎一律使用標楷體。香港所出版的教科書大部分都使用標楷體,” I'd say 標楷體 is the de facto standard script for traditional character.

PTS and Schnabelhund, thank you for taking the time to point out how very wrong I was!

I did, in fact, overlook the fact that my browser was not using 標楷體. When I said "official" 楷體，I meant official from the Mainland perspective (http://www.zdic.net/z/1b/zy/6975.htm) , and I'm sure you guys have already been putting up with enough 大陸 hegemony from us as it is. ;-)

I will ask Jeremy to revert the change ASAP.

thanks... i'm glad i'm not the only one that noticed the difference.

i'm studying traditional so i'm glad you guys are working on it.

Thanks Evan! :)