From: Christopher John Fynn (cfynn@gmx.net)
Date: Tue Jun 03 2003 - 19:40:56 EDT
"Pim Blokland" <pblokland@planet.nl>
> Hello all,
> I have got a stupid question - that is, the question was asked
of me
> and I didn't know what to say.
> What is ISO 10646?
> Usually I can asnwer questions like this by doing an Internet
> search, but in this case, I get varying answers:
> it is a code page; it is a character set; it is identical to
> "Unicode" (that is, the words "ISO 10646" and "Unicode" are
> interchangable); it is a paper describing a standard.
> So where can I find the "formal" definition and how can I tell
that
> is the formal definition and why doesn't everybody agree?
> Pim Blokland
Pim
The official JTC1/SC2/WG2 - ISO/IEC 10646 - UCS web page is at:
http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/
The ISO/IEC 10646 Standard & The Unicode Standard encode the
same set of characters at the same codepoints. There are some
differences in the set of characters encoded in the printed
versions of these two standards since they get published at
different times and different frequencies. The Unicode Standard
also says more about properties of the encoded characters than
the ISO/IEC 10646 Standard does.
Members of the Unicode Technical Committee, responsible for TUS,
largely come from Corporations who are members of the Unicode
Consortium while members of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 come from
technical committees of national standards bodies who are
members of ISO and choose to participate. The two groups work
pretty closely together - especially on all the work involved in
dealing with proposals for new characters and scripts.
In my experience some people from non-commercial & government
organisations are happier to refer to "ISO/IEC 10646" - but
"Unicode" is much easier for most people to remember.
- Chris
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