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Thread: Broken harmony ?

  1. #1
    忍心してます! Sharingan's Avatar
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    Broken harmony ?

    Japanese people like harmony. Japanese society looks harmonious and homogenous. But how comes that in a country that values harmony and uniformity there are 4 different PC encoding types for Japanese characters, used only in Japan ? There is EUC, SHIFT-JIS, ISO-2022-JP and Unicode. In Europe, the Americas, Africa and Oceania, there are a few systems, but it is possible to use only one encoding type because people of all these countries agreed on one common system. One country in Europe only has one encoding system. Why can't the Japanese agree on only one for Japanese language ?

    Then, all Europeans use 50hz TV's and all North Americans 60hz TV's. But the Japanese use 60hz in the West of Japan and 50hz in the East. That looks very unharmonious. How do the Japanese deal with that ?

  2. #2
    Resident Realist nice gaijin's Avatar
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    is the lack of universal standards indicative of a lack of harmony? My sources say no.

    Besides, unicode is about as close to a standard as I've seen; I've never had trouble seeing Japanese sites using it.

  3. #3
    忍心してます! Sharingan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by nice gaijin View Post
    is the lack of universal standards indicative of a lack of harmony? My sources say no.

    Besides, unicode is about as close to a standard as I've seen; I've never had trouble seeing Japanese sites using it.
    Ok, but Unicode is not the most common encoding system in Japan. Yahoo Japan Mail uses EUC and mobile phones SHIFT_JIS (I think), so that when I get mails from Japanese friends I always have to change the encoding to see them. I have never had that kind of problem communicating with friends or penpals in other European countries because there is only one encoding for many languages. Japan only has one language and 4 encoding. How is that possible ? Why can't they agree on only one ?

  4. #4
    Just me Glenski's Avatar
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    I'd say you're going to have to ask a programmer about this one, the technical aspect anyway. It has zero to do with cultural harmony.

  5. #5
    Cute and Furry Ewok85's Avatar
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    Umm, you're all over the shop here. TV's in all parts of Japan use the NTSC-J, you are thinking of frequency standards for electricity. There is a reason behind that, cookie if you are able to tell me why rather than making inaccurate statements ;)
    Leon - http://www.leonjp.com
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