Wednesday, December 2, 1998
Ed, Jennifer,
What follows are a few comments on the topic of 'Additional Requirements for Unicode 3.0 Conformance.'  They are purely personal, not based on any attempt to get consensus on this.
I don't think Unicode™ could or should specify what a particular product does, but it could usefully specify (perhaps in an appendix) some questions consumers might want to pose to vendors.  Ed's solution is a good step in this direction.  His preceding 'Problem' and 'Justification' sections seem to me to overstate what he wants to do.
In 'Problem' at the end of the first paragraph, the 'o' is missing from "another".  I'd amend the last sentence of the second paragraph to end "... provides purchasers with no information about assessing what features of Unicode 2.0 are actually implemented in a product."
In "Justification" (middle sentence) I'd say "More detailed conformance assessment information will help customers ..."  Beginning the last sentence: "Among others with an interest ... " and change 'DCL' to DCI.
"Suggested Solution", third paragraph: "Vendors of products claiming conformance to Unicode should expect to respond to the following:" "shall" seems too strong.
To 'types of input supported' add "audio" (think big).
To 'types of output supported' add specify what conventions are
supported, e.g., SGML, PDF, font options, etc.  (I wish there were a way to specify briefly the level of rendering excellence for Arabic and Indic scripts but there isn't-so far as I know.  Would specifying combining the Arabic lam+alif into a single glyph and various essential Devanagari conjuncts be too specific?)
Possible additions:
1.      List other systems with which the product has demonstrated interoperabililty.
2.      Use, if any, of private use space (e.g.,for logos, dotless lower case 'j', new Han charaters) and of surrogates.
3.      Types of processing supported (sorting: according to what conventions?; ISO 2709 record format: widely used for data sharing among library applications, etc.)

Best wishes for the San Jose Dec. 15-16 get-together-I will not attend.
Regards,
Jim Agenbroad ( jage@LOC.gov )
The above are purely personal opinions, not necessarily the official views of any government or any agency of any.  Phone: 202 707-9612; Fax: 202 707-0955; US mail: I.T.S. Dev.Gp.4, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. SE, Washington, D.C. 20540-9334 U.S.A.