Three forms of ideographic characters are commonly used today: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and kanji. Traditional Chinese characters, which are thousands of years old, generally contain more strokes than other ideographic forms and are more pictorial. These characters are still used in Taiwan. Simplified Chinese characters, which are based on Traditional Chinese characters, were developed in mainland China to make reading and writing easier to learn. Although Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese share some characters, the simplified characters, of which there are less than 7000, are composed of fewer strokes and in most cases are distinct from their original counterparts. This is why software products developed for the Chinese-speaking market are usually released in two editions—one for the Traditional Chinese script and one for the Simplified Chinese script.