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From: bayes@hpfcrj.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Re: Need Kanji fonts (hershey)
Message-ID: <3960002@hpfcrj.HP.COM>
Date: Thu, 19-Feb-87 18:24:21 EST
Article-I.D.: hpfcrj.3960002
Posted: Thu Feb 19 18:24:21 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Feb-87 15:52:48 EST
References: <3993@mnetor.UUCP>
Organization: HP Ft. Collins
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Re Kanji JIS level I:

Having implemented a level II stroke driver years ago, I can say with some
assurance that ALL katakana and hiragana (nominally 51 each, actually there
are 3 or 4 missing from each), all upper and lower case Romaji (English
alphabet), many greek math and many punctuation/special characters are
included in Level I. Katakana and hiragana also contain connectives, 
diminutives, and repetitors; these are also in level I. Level II is a strict 
superset, and provides just barely enough kanji for a high-school level 
presentation. 'Course you can always "spell" missing Kanji with hiragana, 
but that's considered unkulturny. Foreign words are almost always spelled
with katakana.

Where ">" means "better than, in the eyes of a Japanese reader", and ">>"
means "much better than":

~12000 "standard" Kanji + ~2000 user-definable > level II > Level I
>> katakana or hiragana > ASCII

Above is a personal opinion. See a doctor if symptoms persist.

Scott Bayes - sometime speaker of Japanese
su-ko-tto be-i-zu (alpha phoneticization of katakana rendering of name. The
Kanji rendering I prefer is weird: lit. "rice-head")