Subject: coding standards

From: Stephen G Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1991 10:53:58 -0400

Valk v/d Martijn writes:

 > I'm currently working on a pattern recognition system which should recognize
 > handwritten Chinese. One of the issues I have to resolve is which coding
 > standard to choose to code the result.
 >
 > Could some kind soul please tell me more about the following standards:
 >
 > GB
 > BIG5
 > Unicode
 > JIS 1st and 2nd level

GB is the official standard in mainland China, and an unofficial
standard in places where simplified Chinese characters are used, such
as Singapore and among mainland Chinese resident abroad.  Don't use it
unless your system is geared exclusively toward simplified characters.
GB does not distinguish between traditional characters that correspond
to the same simplified character (such as mian4 ("face") and mian4
("noodle, wheat")).

BIG5 is the official standard in Taiwan and an unofficial standard in
other places where traditional characters are used, e.g. Hong Kong.
It has codes for almost twice as many characters as GB.

JIS is the official standard in Japan for Japanese.  Although it
includes Japanese kanji, I believe it excludes even some commonly used
Chinese characters.

Unicode is a proposed international standard that many people are
hoping will succeed.  It incorporates codes for simplified Chinese
characters, traditional Chinese characters, Japanese, Korean, and
virtually all alphabets used anywhere in the world.  But the code
order is not necessarily related to GB, BIG5, or JIS.

Maybe "Mr Fung", a Unicode expert, could give you more details.  Try
sending your question to the zhongwen discussion group,
[email-masked], moderated by "Mr Fung".