What the article in BYTE fails to explain is why Japan and Korea voted against
having a unified Han character set in ISO 10646. Since the whole purpose
of the ISO 10646 and Unicode exercises is to develop a character set that
can accomodate Chinese, Japanese and Korean, the arguments Japan and Korea
give for their negative vote are interesting.
 
Sheldon's observations
 
  "In many (although not all) cases, these characters not only look more or
   less the same, they also mean the same thing in all three scripts."
 
and
 
  "Cultural issues are particularly sensitive in the Far East; for example,
   the Japanese standards proces is driven in part by the traditionally
   conservative Ministry of Culture."
 
are not really sufficient -- at least not to me, since I have a reasonable
knowledge of the Japanese language, huistory and culture. I even find the
latter remark somewhat biased.
 
I'd like to hear more about this from an expert in this field.
 
Nico Poppelier
 
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Dr. Nico A.F.M. Poppelier
Elsevier Science Publishers, APD, R&D Division,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Email: [log in to unmask]