L2/01-334
 
CEN/TC 304 N987
Subject: Minutes of 18th Plenary in June 2001
Source: Secretary of CEN/TC304
Date: 20 August 2001
 
Minutes of 18th Plenary of CEN/TC304 European Localization ICT Requirements
 
The meeting took place 26 June in the CEN-meeting-center in Brussels according to an invitation and an agenda proposed in document N975. The day before on 25 June, an Ad-hoc meeting on the future of Cultural Diversity took place, see agenda item 5.
 
1 Roll Call of Delegates
 
The following delegations were present at the plenary. The Head of each delegation is listed first:
 
Norway: Keld Jørn Simonsen.
Germany: Paul Dettmer, Marc Wilhelm Küster
Finland: Erkki Kolehmainen, Dr Umamaheswaran (Uma)
Sweden: Monica Ståhl
Poland: Elzibieta Broma-Wrzesien
Iceland: Þorgeir Sigurðsson,
Greece: Evangelos Melagrakis
Austria: Gerhard Budin
 
From CEN/ISSS: James Boyd
Chair: Wolf Arfvidson
Secretary: Þorgeir Sigurðsson
 
The chair said that Þorgeir Sigurðsson was still contracted by Icelandic Standard to perform the secretarial duties for TC304. Icelandic Standard would be responsible for the secretariat of TC304 until April next year 2002, unless some other national standard body volunteered to take on these duties earlier or a decision was taken by CEN to disband the TC.
 
2 Adoption of Agenda (document N975)
 
James Boyd expressed his wish that all outstanding contractual items of TC304 with CEN and the Commission be discussed and decisions taken to finalize them. Agenda items on ESR and EOR-2 were added and the agenda and the minutes were modified to give information on each outstanding work item under its agenda item and the corresponding resolutions, if any.
 
3 Appointment of Resolutions Drafting Committee
 
The secretary, Marc Küster, Erkki Kolehmainen and Keld Simonsen volunteered to draft the text of proposed resolutions.
 
4 Minutes of the Last Meeting (N974)
 
Keld Simonsen complained on a statement in the minutes of the last plenary where it was stated that the taxonomy draft had been for discussion for years and the editor had not used the opportunities to make the changes needed. The minutes were adopted with this sentence removed.
 
5 Cultural Diversity
 
James Boyd told about the present status of the TC304 contract with the European Commission and how it was to be wrapped up. Following the PricewaterhouseCoopers Report in N966 many ongoing work-items that had been frozen for payment could now continue but resolutions were needed for their finalization/adoption of deliverable. The critical question now was what should be the next steps for Cultural Diversity standardization. It was envisioned that there would be a Steering group that would review the field within the frame of the e-Europe initiative. Financing would come from a follow-up contract to the e-Europe work. 
 
During an Ad-Hoc meeting the day before, James Boyd had presented what should be the content of a Terms of Reference for the Steering group. It was seen as desirable to distribute the text of the Terms of Reference to members of TC304 in either a draft form or a final form for information and comments. The chair Wolf Arfvidson also asked for a document on e-Europe standardization to be distributed to TC members.
 
There was a long discussion on representatives and the timetable in the Terms of Reference for the Steering Group. Norway (Keld Simonsen) asked for more IT-Users to be included. In the Ad-Hoc group meeting the day earlier the same discussion had taken place and the Chair had asked Dr Uma to write minutes to be distributed inside the chairman advisory group. The chair now asked Marc Küster if he could propose a work program for localization and IT to be discussed in this context. The meeting was reminded of earlier efforts on the same (the PT01 report).
 
The future of TC304 and its secretariat was discussed. Icelandic standard had asked to be relieved of the duty of upholding it (N97?). The chair said that a resolution would be proposed, encouraging National Standard Bodies to apply for the secretariat. He said there was a country interested in having the TC304 secretariat and he said that the Chairman Advisory Group would write a letter, encouraging an application from that country. It was assumed natural that a new secretariat for TC304 would also become the secretariat for the Steering group on Cultural Diversity.
 
6 Management of TC304
 
a) Liaisons reports
 
No written liaison reports had been presented, but Keld Simonsen and Dr Uma gave verbal reports on developments in ISO/IEC JTC1 and Gerhard Budin told of ISO TC37.
 
Keld Simonsen told of standards, amendments and reports that were for ballot in WG20. Among these were extensions to standardized cultural registries, a grandfather clause on TC304 and extensions based on the TC304 PT01 report. There was a new revision of POSIX and a guideline for writing Locales. The chair asked if TC members could have a copy of these guidelines.
 
A draft amendment for the ISO JTC1 sorting standard was out for vote because of additions to ISO/IEC JTC1 10646. Dr Uma added that TC304 should take note of math symbols being added into part 1 in 10646. He also said Plane 14 of that standard was of TC 304 interest because of tagging characters. MES might also be affected because of added characters in 10646 and Dr Uma said that in distributed proposals, Michael Everson had already made changes to the proposed MES-3 definitions in the ISO-10646 standard that the MES CEN Workshop initiated by TC304 had defined.
 
The information on the MES changes caused much stir. Marc Küster proposed that the discussion be summed up with a resolution on keeping the MES naming unproblematic.
 
Resolution #1 Identification and use of MESC
 
CEN TC304 emphasises that in order to maintain integrity and interoperability the names and the corresponding content of Multilingual European Subsets (MES) must always be used as defined in CEN Workshop Agreement 13873:2000. This is especially true for the Annex A of FPDAM 1 of ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000.
 
Unanimous
 
The secretary was asked to forward this resolution to the appropriate ISO/IEC JTC1 SC2 officials and 10646-1 editors.
 
Gerhard Budin gave a report on a TC 37 subject. A discussion followed on formal Ordering standards. It was stated that both CEN TC304 and ISO TC37 had produced ordering standards that were profiles of the ISO/IEC JTC1 ordering standard. There was also discussion on languages codes.
 
b) Matching and broken links at STRI
 
The status of the Matching Project Team was presented. The final deliverable - without a summary - had already been adopted by TC304, but the finalized document was now presented for information to the plenary. Aresolution was adopted.
 
Resolution #2 Matching 1
 
TC304 notes that the Matching report has been finalised as in the document N981 and forwarded to CEN as final deliverable. The TC thanks the Matching Project Team for having completed its work.
 
Unanimous
 
During the discussion the delegates noted that links at the TC304 web site had been broken so that documents were no longer directly accessible. (They had been moved from stri.is to stadlar.is). This was objected to and the following resolution was adopted:
 
Resolution #3 Staðlar
 
TC304 regrets that the implementation of the change of URL at Icelandic standard of stri.is into stadlar.is has meant that many Internet-links to TC304 work have been broken. TC304 requests that the old links be automatically redirected to the new ones.
 
Unanimous
 
c) EOR- 1
 
The plenary was informed that the European Ordering Rules (EOR)-1 pre-standard ENV 13710 had been reprinted with the letters added that were lost in the original publishing. The continuation of this work was discussed separately (see EOR-2).
 
d) Fallback
 
The status of the Fallback document was reviewed. It was presented for TC adoption as a technical report with a short additional text of warning (see document N978). The Greek delegation made it however clear that the Fallback method was very unsatisfactory to the Greek users and that Greece would not accept the document even as a technical report (CR).
 
A discussion resulted on the desirability but difficulty in listing all known deficiencies and on the invoicing situation that made it desirable for the project team members that the document be adopted. A resolution was proposed that asked for an additional warning to be added to the report on the use of the fallback for Greek letters, as follows:
 
Resolution #4 Fallback
TC304 accepts the Fallback document in N978 to be presented to CEN BT for adoption as a CR with the following text on Greek letters added in the foreword: The method of performing fallback from Greek letters into Latin letters is especially seen as posing problems to Greek users and its use is not.
 
Unanimous
 
The secretary was asked to add this text to the report and to do other work needed.
 
e) ESR-1
 
The plenary noted that the ESR-1 CWA had still not been formally forwarded to the ISO/JTC1 SC22/WG20 as input to the revision of the cultural register. The secretary was urged to do this ASAP.
 
f) prENV1923
 
The plenary members were presented with the outcome of a ballot on a document prENV1923. As stated in the ballot document the plenary resolved what the outcome of the ballot had been:
 
Resolution #5 prENV1923
CEN TC304 notes the positive outcome of the ballot on prENV1923 in N984, with Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Austria and Greece voting yes without comments and Czech Republic voting yes with comments and Switzerland abstaining. The CEN TC304 plenary accepts the Czech comments and instructs its secretary to forward the thus edited document to CEN BT for adoption as an ENV.
 
Unanimous
 
g) National locales
 
A report from the Project team assisting National Bodies in registering their Cultural IT convention (populating the cultural registry) was presented (see N983), It was adopted as follows:
 
Resolution #6 National locales
CEN/TC304 accepts document N983 as the final report of the National Locale Project Team and asks the PT to conclude its work by forwarding the collected data to the National bodies together with instructions on how to register it in the Cultural Registry. The secretary is instructed to forward N983 to CEN as the final contracted deliverable.
 
Unanimous
 
h) Eurolocale
 
The situations with the Eurolocale Project was reviewed. The CEN Workshop set up had finished its production of a CWA and thus done its contracted work (res x/17), but this CWA was to be registered as a EU country locale in the European and ISO cultural registries. This step would call for a 3 month commentary period and after that the Eurolocale part 1 (the narrative part) was to be processed into an ENV. The secretary would provide the editor of the Eurolocale PT with his signature so that the registration could take place. He also was reminded of providing CEN with a delegated resolution so that a work item would be in place when the ENV was processed. Additional resolutions were not needed.
 
i) OCR-B testing
 
Document N982 was presented to the plenary members. It contained a report to the plenary on the positive outcome of testing the Euro sign glyph in the OCR-B font. Since this was the main objective of the OCR-B testing, the plenary accepted this report: OCR-B
 
Resolution #7 OCR-B Testing
Noting that the Project Team for OCR-B Testing has informed the TC304 Secretariat that a report on testing details will be submitted when complementary tests of OCR-B letter extentions are concluded; and also noting that work on an OCR-B ENV is in progress; TC304 accepts the report of the Project Team contained in CEN/TC304 N982, and instructs its secretary to forward it to CEN as the final contracted deliverable.
 
Unanimous
 
j) OCR-B standard
 
The history of OCR-B standardization was reviewed.
 
The task of revising the standard had been in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 but was there terminated mainly because no funding for testing of potential character additions could be secured. Since there however exists a specifically European interest (i.e. the Euro sign) to have the OCR-B standard extended, this revision work has in practice partly been taken over by TC304. This work may in the future become coordinated with JTC1/SC31. The issue remained open if TC304 was to create an EN or an ENV. Since it was believed that ENV was a much easier process, the following resolution was adopted.
 
Resolution #8 OCR-B ENV
CEN/TC304 resolves that the deliverable for the OCR-B work should be an ENV. The secretary is instructed to take the necessary steps for the document to be adopted.
 
Unanimous
 
k) EOR-2
 
The continuation of alphabetical standardization was discussed. Marc Küster presented a document N985 containing a number of issues with proposed solutions for the EOR-1 work to be expanded into EOR-2. The time-frame for the work was discussed and it was assumed that a final draft from TC304 could be processed starting in December 2001 with a two month TC-enquiry. (First draft proposal sent out to TC304 before the December plenary.) The plan in N985 was accepted by the plenary with a resolution:
 
Resolution #9 EOR-2
CEN/TC304 accepts the EOR-2 actions for the way forward suggested in document N985.
 
Unanimous
 
7 Any other business
 
Wolf Arfvidson made known that this would probably be his last meeting as chair of TC304 as he had already served as chair for an extended period of time. A resolution was passed because of this:
 
Resolution #10 Thanks to Chair
CEN/TC304 thanks Wolf Arfvidson for his many years of leadership of TC304 and wishes him every success in his future endevours.
 
Acclamation
 
Icelandic Standard had given notice to CEN to relinquish its holding of the TC304 secretariat. A resolution was passed because of this:
 
Resolution #11 Secrertariat
Tc304 notes that the Icelandic Standard Association has given notice to relinquish the secretarat of TC304 and encourages its members to consider applying for this position.
 
Unanimous
 
8 Adoptions of Resolutions
 
The resolutions are listed each under its agenda number. The resolutions were all adopted unanimously.
 
9 Preparation for next meeting and thanks to host
 
Resolution #12 Thanks to host
CEN/TC304 wishes to thank James Boyd of CEN/ISSS for participating in the ad-hoc and the TC304 plenary meeting and for use of the facilities at the CEN meeting centre.
 
Unanimous
 
Gerhard Budin wished TC-members to note that a meeting of LISA would take place in November where a focus would be put on standards.
 
The next meeting of TC304 was tentatively put on 3rd of December 2001. It was anticipated that in that meeting any unresolved issues with EOR-2 might be resolved. It might also be a possible switch-over meeting for a new secretariat. Any needed interrim representation in the Cultural steering group would be handled by the chairman advisory group.
 
Resolution #13 Future meeting
CEN/TC304 sets the tentative meeting date on 3rd December 2001 in Brussels.
Unanimous