ISO/IEC JTC 1                                                         
Information Technology                                                


ISO/IEC  JTC 1 N 5684                   

DATE:  1998-12-30     

REPLACES                                     

DOC TYPE:
Other document (Defined)                                              

TITLE:
JTC 1/SC 2 Response to JTC 1 N 5449, Contribution from The Netherlands
on the Functioning of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2, Coded Character Sets        

SOURCE:
SC 2 Secretariat                                                      

PROJECT:                   

STATUS:
This document is circulated to JTC 1 National Bodies for information  
and review at the January 1999 JTC 1 Plenary meeting in Rio.          

ACTION ID:  ACT 

DUE DATE:            

DISTRIBUTION:  P and L Members                                             
                                                                           
MEDIUM:   

DISKETTE NO.:            

NO. OF PAGES:  5         


Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1, American National Standards Institute, 11 
West 42nd Street, New York, NY  10036; Telephone:  1 212 642 4932;    

Facsimile:  1 212 840 2298; Email:  lrajchel@ansi.org

Secretariat ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 - Toshiko KIMURA
IPSJ/ITSCJ (Information Processing Society of Japan/Information Technology Standards Commission of Japan)*
Room 308-3, Kikai-Shinko-Kaikan Bldg., 3-5-8, Shiba-Koen, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105 JAPAN
Tel: +81 3 3431 2808; Fax: +81 3 3431 6493; E-mail: kimura@itscj.ipsj.or.jp; http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2
*A Standard Organization accredited by JISC

SC 2 Response to the Netherlands on the Functioning of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 (JTC1 N5449)
 

1. Stability of SC 2 standards

SC 2 always pays special attentions to the stability of the SC 2 standards.

Concerning Romanian issues, National Body of Romania proposed to change the glyphs (character shapes) and character names of S/T with cedilla to S/T with comma below.

Current 10646 glyphs and character names are come from ISO/IEC 8859 and ISO/IEC 6937 and have been widely used in these international standards for a long time. Glyphs in SC 2 standards are not normative but character names.

If SC 2 accepted the original Romanian proposal, it should have caused incompatible changes. On the other hands, since these characters are primarily used in Romania and Turkey, Romania is one of the native countries who use these characters in their native languages. SC 2 could not ignore Romanian requests.

SC 2, SC 2/WG 2, and SC 2/WG 3 including lengthy e-mail discussion spent several hours discussing Romanian proposal at the plenary meeting. After long discussion and consideration of the proposals, SC 2 and its WGs finally concluded the current resolution.

Background and more detailed information are available from the attached WG 2 response.

2. Market relevance

10646 "roadmap" document developed by SC 2/WG 2 provides information about the maximum possibility of future development.

However, all subdivision of SC 2 projects requires at least five active p-member support expressed explicitly at the SC 2 plenary meeting or SC 2 letter ballot. All the changes of Program of Work made by the SC 2, were submitted to JTC 1 for endorsement. Thus SC 2 strictly follows the JTC 1 Directives.

3. Clarity of the decision process

In the past, only SC 2 secretariat and its project editor dealt dispositions of comments of most of SC 2 letter ballots. This procedure caused several problems in the past.

Thus current SC 2 operation is to strictly follow JTC 1 Directives. SC 2 asks to have a meeting to consider letter ballot result and to prepare disposition of comments at a meeting.

Concerning DIS 8859 processing in 1997, SC 2 consulted with ITTF planned to have SC 2/WG 3 editing group meeting just after the closing date of the letter ballots. SC 2 asked ITTF to provide official letter ballot results at the meeting and ITTF confirmed the SC 2 request.

Unfortunately the official ballot results were net received by SC 2 at the meeting. However, at the meeting, all NBs who submitted negative ballots attended and provided their ballot comments. In Crete, the DIS editing group discussed major issues and prepared principles of DIS editing. Principles of 8859 DIS editing were discussed and approved by SC 2 plenary meeting. Final disposition of comment and revision of the drafts were delegated to the DIS editing group by SC 2 plenary. SC 2 secretariat set up an e-mail list and based on e-mail list discussion final disposition of comment and revised text were prepared by each project editor.

Since DIS 8859 is multi-parts standard and each parts shares common texts, a meeting was mandatory to gather project editor of each parts and to discuss the dispositions.

Secretariat ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 - Toshiko KIMURA
IPSJ/ITSCJ (Information Processing Society of Japan/Information Technology Standards Commission of Japan)*
Room 308-3, Kikai-Shinko-Kaikan Bldg., 3-5-8, Shiba-Koen, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105 JAPAN
Tel: +81 3 3431 2808; Fax: +81 3 3431 6493; E-mail: kimura@itscj.ipsj.or.jp; http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2
*A Standard Organization accredited by JISC

These comments concentrate on those aspects that deal with the functioning of WG 2.

ISO/IEC 10646 is called the "Universal Character Set" for a reason: it is intended to cover all the scripts of the world. This view is widely shared by the industry and the user communities, both of which participate both directly and indirectly in the work of WG 2.

Thus, the stated wish to create rational limitations to additions of new characters or scripts must not lead to arbitrary barriers for entry. The market relevance for inclusion cannot be defined in the terms proposed in the contribution by the Netherlands National Body, as long as the industry upholds the above stated stand on universality.

Admittedly, as the result of the above, it is not uncommon that any given National Body may find itself in a situation, where it has no expertise on a particular script in the process of being encoded. The value of the participation of such a National Body then lies in their expertise in the standardization process and in the general aspects of encoding characters for use in IT applications.

The process in SC 2/WG 2 is a transparent one and extensive efforts continue to be made to implement advanced planning for it. This process is being continuously improved and we welcome the Netherlands to participate in this process in co-operation with the other National Bodies, liaison organizations, and experts. It is unavoidable that many issues will be discussed and prepared outside the formal WG operation. In particular, WG2 has made successful use of ad-hoc meetings to resolve complex technical issues requiring specialized expertise. This would appear to be in line with the stated wishes of the Netherlands NB.

The suggestion by the Netherlands NB to turn over sections of the standard to relevant user communities is at best impractical for lack of mechanism and control and at its worst would result in a fractured standard, something that very much goes against the idea of a unified, universal character set which is the primary market requirement.

As to the particular technical issue raised in attachment B, WG 2 has gone out of its way to accommodate the Netherlands NB position in that matter (see WG 2 N 1789R2, of which an extract is attached to this document) and this issue would thus appear to be resolved, as of this meeting.

This has been a difficult process, not least because the relevant contribution of the Netherlands in Crete was withdrawn at the request of the Netherlands representative. Other than that, we believe that the representative of the Netherlands has been given more than ample opportunity to present his formal and informal views on this and other issues in the WG, in ad-hoc meetings, and on the e-mail discussion list.

*

 
Attachment

Extract of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 N 1789R2, Draft Report on JT 1/SC 2 letter ballot on FPDAM.18 to ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993 (E), (Various letters and symbols).
 
…
 

Netherlands. (N) Not accepted.

Many National Bodies within JTC1/SC2 wish to make the disctinction between letters S and T with cedilla and the same letters with comma below in some circumstances.

It is recognized that this distinction has not always been consistently adopted in printed material, as is clear from the examples provided by the Netherlands in SC2 N3047. However, there is a need to provide separate code positions now so that the distinction can be adopted in future wherever desired.

An explanatory note, shown below, will be added to Annex P for the four characters to which this comment applies. This is intended to address the concerns expressed by the Netherlands in more detailed explanations of the comment that appears in the ballot response.

Text of Note for Annex P.

0218 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S WITH COMMA BELOW

This character is intended for use only in those cases where it is necessary to make a distinction with the letter with cedilla. Both forms of the letter may be found in a single document written in a single language, e.g. Romanian or Turkish.

In ISO/IEC 8859-2 only a single (8-bit) coded character is provided, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S WITH CEDILLA, which maps to 015E in ISO/IEC 10646 by default, and may map by mutual agreement, between sender and receiver, to this letter with comma below. See ISO/IEC 8859-2 for further information on the use of that standard.

…

A similar note will be included for the following characters:
0219 LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH COMMA BELOW,
021A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH COMMA BELOW, and
021B LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH COMMA BELOW.