Introduction
The Windows NT Extended
Kanji Processing Council (XKP Council) is a group
founded in February 1995 in order to promote the
creation of systems utilizing personal computers
in local body governments.
The circumstances leading to the foundation of
the XKP Council clearly
show its characteristics. The XKP Council began
with requests from computer makers and solution
providers to Microsoft. Attempts on Windows
personal computers at carrying out computer
processing of family registers, lists of
residents and other items traditionally handled
by mainframes and office computers have been
frustrated by the lack of characters other than
in the JIS standard, as well as a lack of
standardization in handling user-defined
characters. When building client-server
application systems, it is not possible to use a
proprietary method for extending user-defined
characters, as the system must operate in a
multi-vendor environment. In order to solve these
problems and standardize processing of extended
Kanji characters, Microsoft and other companies
that are connected to processing Kanji
characters, such as computer makers, software
package makers, solution providers and font
vendors, joined together laterally and founded
the XKP Council.
Because of the scale of the project - Windows NT
compatibility for individual and place names - it
is attracting considerable attention from areas
other than local government bodies, including
government offices and industries that must
process individual and place names, such as
financial and educational institutions, as well
as the printing and publishing industries.
This document was created as part of the
Council's activities. Before looking at
user-defined characters, we would like review
Japanese language processing under Windows and
Windows NT, and focus mainly on basic topics.
We hope that this will contribute to greater
understanding of Japanese language processing on
personal computers.
Windows NT
Extended Kanji Processing Council
http://www.xkp.or.jp/
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