My point is that it is too late to argue about these things now since
Unicode and 10646 are frozen. So we should instead talk about how to
salvage the wreck. I.e. how we can still make the best of the
situation. Others may argue that we should ignore 10646 completely,
and my reply to that is that that is their choice, and the future
shall decide a winner, or it shall show that coexistence is possible
(like the TCP/IP vs OSI case (though many would argue that there is a
clear winner here)).
And, what I have proposed is the way to salvage it.
As Unicode or ISO 10646 needs profiling, let's give it in "charset".
I am not normally a violent person (inspite of my 2 meter height and
21 stone weight), but it is precisly when my tools misbehave that I am
most tempted.
This is a matter of education. Senders, today, are told that their
ASCII message may look slightly different on the receiver's display.
Likewise, users of the Unicode character set will need to be educated
about the *possible* differences in the rendering of Han characters.
If they are not satisfied with their education, they might use ISO
2022, fax, Ohta-code, or whatever. So be it.
I remember, during the world war II, in a French region invaded by Germany,
people are educated to use German, not French.
Of course, if all the people in the world are educated to use German, it
would be convenient to Hitler.
Cultural invasion is simply a matter of education, of course.
Now, are we, Japanese, being forced to use Unified Han because it
is convenient for Europeans?
Masataka Ohta
PS
When Japan merged Korea before WWII, Japanese was educated in Korea, which
was of course a cultural invasion.