DAN@ibm.COM (02/28/91)
>Date: 26 Feb 91 09:43:26 GMT >From: harald.alvestrand@elab-runit.sintef.no >Subject: Re: Unicode; Internationalizing char sets >To: xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu > >UNICODE is (IMHO) another US loser. >It is (as far as I know) heartily disliked by the Japanese, Chinese, Korean >and others whom IBM et al are trying to say that they make it for. >The reason is that they try to squeeze characters that look *almost* the same >and mean *almost* the same thing into a single character position. >Kind of like writing French without the accents: Readable, but UGLY. > >The ISO guys are gathering around ISO 10646, a *32-bit* (gasp) character set >with compaction methods that make it compatible with ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1). > > Harald Tveit Alvestrand >Harald.Alvestrand@elab-runit.sintef.no The debates between Unicode and ISO 10646 have been going on actively for quite awhile on the appropriate mailing lists. This is an inappropriate list to post such discussion. I have not seen seen Mr. Alvestrand's name on the active lists and it is apparent that he is just repeating statements that are not generally agreed on by either side. If you want to participate, get the full documents of both and join the appropriate mailing lists. The bottom line is believe only about 10% of what you read in most open literature because lots of the discussion is politically rather than technically motivated.