From: glenn@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu (Glenn A. Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Unicode Han Characters [was Re: Language tagging]
Date: 6 Jan 1993 17:59:12 GMT
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
NNTP-Posting-Host: wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu
Keywords: Unicode ISO10646 Hanzi Kanji Hanja

In article <MELBY.93Jan6113951@dove.yk.fujitsu.co.jp> melby@dove.yk.fujitsu.co.jp (John B. Melby) writes:
>If what I have heard about the Unicode standard is accurate, Chinese
>simplified forms are not distinguished from Chinese unsimplified forms
>when they are effectively equivalent.

What you have heard is inaccurate.  Simplified Chinese forms are encoded
separately from their traditional counterparts.

>Of course, there is one major flaw in the preliminary Unicode version:  the
>Japanese simplified form of "sakura" (ying1hua1 de ying1) is not included.

I'm not sure which "preliminary" Unicode version you are referring to;
however, Unicode does have at U+6A31 the character ying1hua1 de ying1.
Is the simplified Japanese form you refer to contained in JISX0208 or
JISX0212?  If it is, then it is in Unicode 1.0.  If it isn't, a second
level of Han characters is now being formulated by the CJK-JRG for inclusion
in a future version of Unicode.  The initial collection of Han characters in
Unicode comprises the Unified Repertoire and Ordering 2.0 produced by
CJK-JRG (CJK Joint Research Group), currently headed by Kato Shigenobu
of Toppan Printing, Japan, with delegation leaders Dominic Cheng (Hong
Kong Information Technologies Federation); Miyazawa Akira (NACSIS),
Japan; Su Liang (Mitac, Taipei Computer Association), Taiwan; Oh Young-Taik
(Korean Bureau of Standards); Zhang Zhoucai (Center for Computer Information
Development Research, Ministry of Machinery and Electronic Industry), China.
The members of the CJK-JRG editorial subcommitte who were responsible
for final review and verification of URO 2.0 were Lee Collins (Taligent), USA;
Kao Tien-Cheu (Institute for Information Industry), Taiwan; Koike Tateo
(Hitachi), Japan; Prof. Lee Choon Tack (Kongju National University), Korea;
and Zhang Zhoucai (CCID/MMEI), China.

As is quite clear from this list, the Han Characters in Unicode (10646)
were hardly the sole efforts of USA members.  An extraordinary amount
of expertise, predominantly from the CJK countries themselves, went into
the development of URO 2.0.  As I mentioned above, the work of CJK-JRG
is not complete, as a subsequent collection of characters is now being
developed for inclusion into the Unicode/10646 standard.

The first collection of Han characters currently included in Unicode
represent the most important and vast majority of existing CJK character
sets.  These include all characters from GB 2312-80, GB 12345-90, 
GB8565-89, CNS116453 (planes 1 & 2), JIS X 0208-1980, JIS X 0212-1990,
KS C 5601-1989, and KS C 5657-1991.  In addition, some characters of the
unsimplified form of GB 7589-87, the unsimplified form of GB 7590-87,
CNS 11643 (plane 14), the old Chinese telegraph code, and unique characters
from ANSI Z.39.64-1989 were included.  If two characters were distinct
in any character set of the first list of character sets above, then
they are distinct in Unicode -- this is called the Source Set Separation
rule.

The second collection of Han characters now being considered by CJK-JRG
include those which were not encoded by any of the above mentioned
character sets and those which are not currently encoded by any character
set.  The analysis and inclusion of these new Han characters into
Unicode will be a major project over the next few years.

Because Unicode *does* incorporate all Han characters used by the important
and widely used CJK character sets, implementations based on Unicode will
immediately be able to interoperate with data currently encoded in these
character sets.

If you would like to obtain (unofficial) mappings between a number of
these character sets and Unicode, you can find them by anonymous FTP
on METIS.COM [140.186.33.40] in /pub/csets.

Glenn Adams