The specification is published and under 5 year review cycle. However,
the glyph registration may be handled by Unicode group. I am not
sure the status of glyph registration. Mike Ksar of HP was involved
to use the font registration to publish 10646. I just suggested
to take a look at the specification and to use the usable part.
If you think ISO 9541 is too old or not practical, I suggest
not to use it.
The character sets were different issues. The specification only
handled glyphs and how to may them to code was never addressed.
The collection of glyphs was internation including oriental
launguages such as Chinese and Korean. I think Alabic was
included too.
Tetsuro