From: Dean Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 07 2005 - 07:50:15 CDT
asadek@st-elias.com wrote at 8:30 PM on Wednesday, July 6, 2005:
>From: "Kenneth Whistler" <kenw@sybase.com>
>
>> Asking again isn't going to turn one up.
>
>Do you expect me to know there is none before asking and being told so?
>Thank you for confirming this absence at the UTC and its apparent veto to
>have this proposal passed to the WG2.
>
>> The presentation of a proposal to a standards committee isn't like
>> an application for a license from a government agency (or something
>> similar), for which the applicant has some kind of legal entitlement
>> and rights to appeal and rights to explicit provision of reasons
>> if the application is turned down.
>
>Pity, as this is not a small point but deals with a major point and
>would avoid repetitive discussions like this one.
>
>>
>> Your task, instead, would be to create a consensus within the
>> character encoding community (and the implementing information
>> technology companies) that the existing Arabic encoding is so
>> flawed that it requires introduction and implementation of
>> a competing, distinct textual representation in Unicode.
>> That, sir, is a *very* high mountain to climb, at this point.
>
>Especially, if I will have not even right to know why it would not be
>accepted!
>
>I was just asking questions and hoped to see written rationales (as these
>would be more complete and self-contained that the general overview you
>quickly mentioned above).
>
>I can't say the tone is very inviting.
Ashraf, I completely agree with and support your sentiments expressed
here. You have rather quickly discovered the elitist, exclusionary, and
at times, downright nasty mentality of many in the Unicode/ISO 10646
community. Part of it stems from hubris, part from fatigue, and part
from the simple fact that this has become such a close knit, almost
incestuous community. There is a real need for substantial amounts of
new blood in this group; unfortunately I don't see that happening
anytime soon. It could, however, change rather quickly if several
international stake-holders simply paid for full membership in the
Unicode Consortium and also became involved in the ISO 10646 efforts
through their national standards bodies. Basically this would take
money, expertise, and time. Given those ingredients, however, you could
effect real change.
Respectfully,
Dean A. Snyder
Assistant Research Scholar
Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project
Computer Science Department
Whiting School of Engineering
218C New Engineering Building
3400 North Charles Street
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218
office: 410 516-6850
cell: 717 817-4897
www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi/
http://users.adelphia.net/~deansnyder/
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