Not wishing to start up a "food fight" over LCD pinout, I'd invite anyone to post a link to a device catalog that contains more pinouts that fail to adhere to the de-facto standard which is generally 14 pins for an 80-character display, with, perhaps two additional pins for low-voltage (5-volt) backlight power than, as a ratio of de-facto/other what's contained in the combined SHARP and EPSON catalogs. Those were, after all, the pioneers, not to mention that they're the ones I've got from back in the day when they were fairly new.

It makes sense that manufacturers would adhere to a common pinout, so they could sell into one-another's markets.

I've seen a number of 16-pin versions, which, BTW, still had the pinout arranged such that the de-facto 14-pin layout still would fit, for character-count > 80, e.g. 4x40, displays, but aside from the ones with similarly 14-pin compatible layouts with the backlight supplies. Now, I've seen custom displays with other pinouts, hence, I don't deny that they exist, but we're not referring to scrap/surplus parts for student/hobbyist use, which is where custom pinouts would be most likely to turn up.

As I said, this isn't worth an extended argument, but a link to a published manufacturer's catalog that doesn't use the de-facto standard more than some other would be really interesting.

RE