L2/99-315
L2 comments on JTC1 documents:
October
18, 1999
JTC
1 N 5889 - Request for Category C Liaison between SC 22/WG 20 and the
World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/members/L2/99289-j1n5889.pdf
L2
comment: The US NB strongly supports this request
JTC
1 N 5893 - SC 2/WG 2 Charter - In Support of the SC 2 Business Plan
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/members/L2/99290-j1n5893.pdf
L2
comment: The US NB agrees with the business plan in JTC1 N5893
JTC
1 N 5894 - Contribution on Initiating Formal Processing of Amendments to
ISO/IEC
10646 (Response to JTC 1 N 5826)
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/members/L2/99291-j1n5894.pdf
L2
comment: The US NB strongly supports this expert contribution.
JTC
1 N 5898 - Comment from the Netherlands on JTC 1 N 5684, SC 2 Response
on
JTC 1 N 5449 on the Issue of the Functioning of SC 2
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/members/L2/99296-j1n5684.htm
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/members/L2/99292-j1n5898.pdf
Suggested
L2 comment:
The US
NB has examined closely the concerns raised by the Netherlands NB in JTC
1 N
5898. That document states irreconcilable differences between SC2 and the
Netherlands
NB over issues which arose in the encoding of four Romanian
characters. The Netherlands NB has been concerned with
the stability of the
ISO/IEC
10646standard, the market relevance of characters encoded in ISO/IEC
10646,
and the clarity of the SC2/WG2 decision process.
The SC2
Secretariat responded in JTC 1 N 5684 to the specific concerns raised by
the
Netherlands NB. In the instance of the four new Romanian characters, the new
allocation
was strongly sought by the Romanians.
WG2 has
since taken the action to further strengthen and clarify (in JTC 1 N
5894)
the criteria used for allocating new characters. Two new criteria were
added:
1) to require the identification of a representative set of authoritative
organizations
and/or individual experts and 2) to require consensus support
among
user communities and their intent to use the new characters. We believe
that
the enhanced guidelines for allocating characters put forth in JTC 1 N 5894
adequately
address the quality concerns.
In the
process of allocating new characters in ISO/IEC 10646, there will be
disagreements
from time to time. However, if there
are clear, fair, and
reasonable
procedures which are followed, then the results should be accepted by
all
national bodies involved. If one national body loses a vote, they should not
then
campaign to undermine all future efforts of the Working Group. If a
national
body feels the principles and procedures for allocation are inadequate,
then the
principles and procedures should be improved. It is counter-productive
to try
to slow or curtail future character allocations and a great disservice to
the
users and implementers of ISO/IEC 10646.
JTC
1 N 5899 - Netherlands Comment on JTC 1 N 5698, as requested in JTC 1 N
5754,
on SC 2
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/members/L2/99293-j1n5899.pdf
L2
comment:
Wide
Industry Support:
The
evidence of wide industry support of Unicode/ISO 10646 is not a matter of a
"few
hundred of users"; it is a matter of strategic decisions that have been
made by
nearly all of the major software companies of the world to incorporate
it into
their product lines. The following products are Unicode/ISO 10646
enabled:
Operating Systems:
Apple MacOS 8.6, MacOS X Server, MacOS X
(forthcoming), ATSUI
Bell Labs Plan 9
BeOS
Compaq's Tru64 UNIX, OpenVMS
IBM AIX, AS/400, OS/2
Microsoft Windows CE, Windows NT, Windows
2000
Palm OS
SCO UnixWare 7.1.0
Sun Solaris
Symbian EPOC
Databases and Repositories:
IBM DB2 (UDB, AS/400)
Justsystem Goro
Microsoft SQL Server
NCR Teradata
Oracle Oracle 8
Progress Software Application Server,
Open Application Server,
WorkGroup Database Server, Enterprise
Database Server
Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere, Adaptive
Server Enterprise
Unisys UREP
Programming Languages, IDEs and Libraries:
For IDEs, this means the editor itself is
Unicode-enabled
(fully or partially), not just that the
programming language is.
Ada 95
Alis Batam
Basis Rosette
GAWK 3.0.3
Java
JavaScript (ECMAScript)
IBM Classes for Unicode (now open source)
Microsoft VJ++, Visual Studio 7.0 (forthcoming),
Visual Basic
Perl 5.005 (improved in 5.6)
Sybase PowerBuilder, Unicode Developer's
Kit
TCL, TK
IBM APL2
Many C/C++ compilers
Other Systems or Products:
Alis Tango, Gist-in-time
AltaVista
Citec DocZilla
Chinese Star 3.0
Ericsson A, R and T series mobile phones
Justsystem Ichitaro, Ichitaro Lite,
Sanshiro, ATOK
Kermit (forthcoming versions)
Linux products: yudit, mined98, Qt, GTK+
(forthcoming)
Lotus Domino, Lotus Notes
Linux xterm (utf-8), qt, gscript
Microsoft Internet Explorer, Office 2000
Netscape Navigator
Novell Distributed File Services,
NetWare Directory Services, Storage
Services
Open Market Transact
Richwin Chinese Language Kit
SC UniPad
TRADOS T-Window for PowerPoint
TwinBridge Partner programs
Union Way Asian Suite
Unitype Global Writer 98, Global Office
UrbanPress 3.0
Fonts and Printing Software:
Most recent commercial fonts have Unicode
character-glyph maps,
although they may or may not support large
repertoires.
Bitstream Cyberbit
Dynalab fonts
FreeType
IBM Advance Function Presentation
Microsoft Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans
Unicode
Monotype fonts
Production First Software fonts
SIL Encore Font Package 3.0
TrueType font specification (including
OpenType and
Apple Advanced Typography
specifications)
Standards:
Unicode and ISO 10646 are synchronized in
character repertoire.
Unicode is required by the new
technologies coming from
the W3C, IETF, and OMG; including XML,
XHTML,
XSL, LDAP, CORBA 3.0, etc.
WAP-Forum WML
Universality:
The US
NB believes that WG2 is well aware that no character encoding standard
can
attain complete universality, because of the existence of undecoded historic
scripts,
idiosyncratic or personal use characters, and symbolic systems whose
use as
characters is debatable. However, it is clearly
within
the scope of 10646 to strive for the goal of universality of encoding for
all
useful characters, and WG2 and SC2 have shown considerable attention to the
tasks
of organizing and setting priorities for encoding of known scripts and
symbols
not yet covered by 10646. Arguing that perfection is unattainable is not
sufficient
grounds for abandoning the task completely--especially when there is
a quite
clear roadmap provided by WG2 for making further progress in completing
the repertoire
of 10646. There are many well-known and important historic and
minority
scripts still outstanding: Avestan, Phoenician, and Javanese are some
obvious
examples. Clearly these can be encoded, and clearly that would increase
the
degree of universality for the coverage in 10646.
The
claim of the Netherlands national body that "more and more resources will
be
required
to add lesser and lesser used scripts" is unsupported by any empirical
evidence.
More resources (in terms of the volunteer activities of participants
in the
standards process, and the cost of their support) is required for the
encoding
of complex and controversial scripts. The encoding of Mongolian and of
Myanmar
were both rather costly in this respect, but that was the result of
their
inherent technical complexity as scripts, and not caused by some metric of
number
of users. By contrast, some historic scripts such as Phoenician are
well-understood,
small, and non-controversial, and would benefit a significant
scholarly
community if encoded. The amount of resources required to complete the
encoding
of Phoenician in 10646 is quite likely to be considerably less than
that
expended over the last several years arguing about two Latin characters for
Romanian,
for example.
The Netherlands
NB requests figures regarding "the cost involved to SC2 members
by a
new amendment to ISO/IEC 10646", as if such a cost could be easily totaled
up. The
majority of the costs involved are the hidden costs that result from the
complexity
and controversy attendant
to
particular amendments. And the costs are not equally shared in any case. The
costs
to the Chinese national body, for example, in preparing the Amendment for
the
Vertical Extension A to the repertoire of Han characters in 10646 were
orders
of magnitude greater than the costs
for the
Netherlands national body in reviewing it.
The US
NB also considers that it is completely at odds with the goal of
linguistic
and cultural adaptability to imply that minority scripts of the world
are not
worth including in the international universal character encoding, is
If
representatives from Berber, Javanese, Hmong, Dai, or Philippine communities
wish to
see their native scripts included, how can one particular national body
claim
that those communities are too small or not important enough to be worthy
of SC2
consideration as part of the international character encoding standard?
The
comparison to the development of programming languages is irrelevant to the
consideration
of how SC2 should be proceeding with 10646.
JTC
1 N 5929 - Comments from the National Body of Japan on the Activities of
SC
2
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/members/L2/99294-j1n5929.htm
L2
comment:
The US
NB considers that the issues raised by the national body of Japan in JTC
1 N
5929 have already been adequately addressed by SC2 in JTC 1 N 5894.
Regarding
specific recommendations raised by the national body of Japan, L2
notes
that:
Publication
of the roadmap by SC2/WG2 as a TR would not make that document any
more
visible to JTC 1. It is already a public document available to any JTC 1
member.
The reason why SC2/WG2 has not chosen to make it a TR is because it is a
planning
document, subject to revision and correction as more information is
gathered
regarding various unencoded scripts. Trying to ballot it and publish it
as a TR
would simply remove all flexibility from it as a planning document,
thereby
eliminating its usefulness. The national body of Japan is effectively
asking
to cast the planning document in concrete, which would result in tying
the
hands of the committee, making it unable to
respond
to the accumulation of better information. That is a recipe for bad
standards-making,
rather than improved standards-making.
The
national body of Japan continues to argue that any amendment of 10646 should
go
through the NP process, rather than proceeding by modifying the PoW as has
been
the case in the past for 10646. This has been addressed in detail in JTC 1
N 5894.
A clear precedent has been established, with very successful results,
for
adding scripts to the universal character encoding by the procedural
mechanism
of modifying the PoW for 10646 to ballot these additions as
Amendments.
L2 sees no merit in the argumentation provided by the national body
of
Japan in N 5929 on this issue. Switching to use of the NP process would
simply
tie up WG2 in a longer process, with more paperwork, and would result in
inappropriate
technical detail work rising to the wrong level of ISO committee
review.
This
can only be considered an attempt to block further progress on completion
of the
scope of work for 10646, rather than an attempt to improve the process.
The US
NB has no basic objection to the suggestions made by the national body of
Japan
in Proposal 2. The standardization of historical and minority scripts
should
clearly involve the participation of relevant experts and native users of
the
scripts where possible. However, the implication that work on 10646 cannot
proceed
because all of the national bodies will not be able to keep specialists
for
each
new draft proposal is not correct. The responsibility of the national
bodies
in reviewing proposals for additions to 10646 is to ensure that the
proposals
generally accord to the architectural principles and quality
requirements
of the standard -- not that they rush out and hire or otherwise
contact
experts on obscure scripts that are beyond their expertise or concern.
The
national body of Japan did not object when thousands of additional obscure
Han
characters were added to 10646, despite the fact that most of the European
national
standards bodies had no experts on their committees who could
realistically
review the details of those additions. WG2, quite properly,
invested
the technical detail work on those amendments to a subcommittee of
experts
(mostly from East Asia, but with other interested and qualified
participants)
who did the research and prepared the relevant documents for the
amendments.
The national body votes on the amendments then amounted to a vote of
confidence
in the ability of WG2 to assemble, control, and review the work of
such
panels of experts. This is a workable, proven method for extending the
international
standard. And L2 considers it inadvisable to tie the hands of
SC2/WG2
in using such flexible and proven methods for proceeding.
The US
NB also notes that the claim that "the historical scripts to be
considered
for the addition to the current standard will be far larger, if they
are to
be complete, than those which are currently listed on the roadmap" is of
doubtful
accuracy. The listing of historical scripts in the roadmap reflects
current
consensus about scripts among the world's leading experts on writing
systems,
and is updated regularly as further experts make their opinions and
expertise
available regarding particular scripts.
The
market relevance of 10646 is easily demonstrable by the wide implementation
of the
standard. L2 considers the market relevance of additions to the standard
to be a
matter of successive completion
of the
universal coverage of the standard. Implementers clearly want a single
character
encoding standard that will serve for all textual representation needs
in the
information industry. Omission
of characters
means that there will be lots of little, custom solutions,
difficult
to maintain and costly for interoperation. That is why the information
industry,
through the Unicode Consortium, continues to support the allocation of
additional
symbols, minority, and historic scripts to the standard. The
incremental
cost of supporting their additions inside the universal standard is
much
less than having to support them with dozens of small, ad hoc solutions
outside
the universal standard.
For
this reason, the US NB considers Proposal 3 in JTC 1 N 5929 to be of little
merit.
ISO/IEC 10646 is a standard of clear and evident market relevance. And
attempting
to refine the definition of market relevance and then apply it on a
case by
case basis for individual NP's for each proposed addition to 10646
misses
the point entirely that the value of 10646 to the information industry
lies in
its universality and completeness.
JTC
1 N 5930 - Finnish National Body Contribution to JTC 1 on the Japanese
National
Body Concerns on SC 2 Programme of Work
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/members/L2/99295-j1n5930.pdf
L2
comment: The US NB agrees with
Finland's position.