L2/21-013

Editorial Committee Report and Recommendations for UTC #166 Meeting

Source: Editorial Commitee

Date: January 15, 2021

A. Unicode Release Topics

A1. Unicode 14.0 Schedule and Planning

FYI: The significant milestones for the Unicode 14.0 release are:

These dates are unchanged from those reported in the Editorial Committee Report and Recommendations for UTC #165 Meeting, except that tentative dates have been added for an Alpha review cycle.

The Editorial Committee is also recommending that the UTC aim to establish the planned repertoire for Unicode 14.0 by its January, 2021 meeting. That will give a sufficient window for public review and feedback before code points and character names are all locked down for the start of beta review in June, 2021. See topic A2 below.

A2. "Alpha" Pipeline Charts and Early Review for 14.0

FYI: No actual progress on this has been made to date. There is now a real urgency to establish a plan for how the Alpha review will work, and to generate the actual public review documents, data files, and code charts.

EC-UTC166-R1: The Editorial Committee recommends that
The UTC authorizes a PRI for an Alpha review period for the Unicode 14.0 repertoire, to start once the initial repertoire has been decided, and an appropriate subset of the UCD data files and charts can be prepared. To close April 20, 2021.

Suggested associated action items:

AI Ken Whistler, Editorial Committee. Prepare the PRI background document for the Alpha review of Unicode 14.0.

AI Ken Whistler. Prepare updated UCD data files for the Alpha review of Unicode 14.0.

AI Michel Suignard. Prepare Alpha review code charts for Unicode 14.0.

AI Rick McGowan. Post the PRI for the Alpha review of Unicode 14.0, to close April 20, 2021.

Note that the details of the repertoire to be covered depend on the outcome of all the UTC decisions proposed in the Recommendations to UTC #166 January 2021 on Script Proposals, covered under separate agenda items for this UTC meeting.

A3. Unicode 14.0 Core Specification Editing

FYI: Editing of the Core Specification for Unicode 14.0 is underway. The Editorial Committee is busy rolling in small fixes and new content for 14.0. Good progress has been made, and we are not yet at the point where any decisions have to be made about postponing content updates currently slated for 14.0 to a future version.

B. Website Topics

B1. Website Status

FYI: The technical website has been stable during the period since the last report to the UTC. Routine ongoing maintenance and updating of pages continues as normal. The UTC document register for 2020 was "rolled over" prior to UTC #166, so that the current register now contains the new documents for 2021.

B2. Website Content Maintenance

FYI: The Editorial Committee is working on a complete analysis of the technical website content, so that content ownership can be rationalized and a more systematic approach to ongoing maintenance can eventually be developed. There is nothing significant to report on this project right now.

C. Editorial Committee Process Issues

FYI: Julie Allen has accepted the position of Chair of the Editorial Committee. Ken Whistler is now the Vice Chair.

D. UTR Topics

D1. UTS #18 Erratum

Discussion: In response to public feedback on the text of UTS #18 received from Karl Williamson, the Editorial Committee notes that there is a technical defect in the table in Section 2.6, Wildcards in Property Values, in the entry illustrating 'Characters with names containing "VARIATION" or "VARIANT"'. The explicit list shown for this match is missing entries for U+11AF0 PAU CIN HAU GLOTTAL STOP VARIANT, as well as 6 other characters U+12469..U+1246E CUNEIFORM NUMERIC SIGN FOUR U VARIANT FORM, etc.

At a minimum, we recommend that the table entry be updated with the missing values, so that the list shown explicitly in the table actually matches the list calculated dynamically when clicking on the list-unicodeset tool link in the lefthand column. A better solution would probably be to give up on tracking the exact content of the set statically in the table, and to reformat the table to just contain the list-unicodeset tool links. The results shown by using those links are guaranteed to stay correct, even if new characters are added that might meet the match criteria, and they are better formatted anyway.

There is also a small, easily fixed defect in the table -- an extra blank row just above the entry in question.

EC-UTC166-R2: The Editorial Committee recommends recording an action item:

AI Mark Davis, Editorial Committee. Make corrections to (and possibly reformat) the table in Section 2.6, Wildcards in Property Values, in UTS #18. (Reference: Section D1 in L2/21-013.)

E. PRI Topics

E1. Editorial Feedback on open PRIs for documents

FYI: The Editorial Committee has no new feedback on open PRIs at this time.

F. Responses to Public Feedback

F1. Public Feedback Noted in L2/21-011

FYI: The Editorial Committee has reviewed the general public feedback routed for its consideration in the UTC #166 Comments on Public Review Issues document: L2/21-011. The exact text of all that editorial feedback can be referred to in L2/21-011. The short summaries below simply reference the authors and dates of the feedback, giving any relevant conclusions from the discussion. The suggested action items are queued up below the discussion section.

Discussion:

Karl Williamson (November 24): This reports on a defect in UTS #18. See Topic D1 above for the proposed disposition.

David Corbett (December 21): "Advance width of Lisu tone letters" The Editorial Committee considered this observation and agrees there is some lack of clarity in the way the text is stated for Lisu. We recommend assigning an action item to clarify the text.

David Corbett (December 23): "Edge case for Syriac shaping" This comment notes that Syriac shaping rules S1, S2, and S3 should also apply at the end of text. The Editorial Committee has looked into this, and agrees that this is a valid edge case not explicitly specified in the rules. Although this is conceivably a technical change to the rule statements, we concluded that it is merely an oversight in the statement of the rules in the text, and that it was the clear intent for the shaping rules to also apply at end of text. We recommend simply updating the statement of the three rules to include the edge condition.

Suggested action items:

EC-UTC166-R3: The Editorial Committee recommends recording the following action items:

AI Liang Hai, Editorial Committee. Update text in Section 18.9, Lisu in the Core Specification, to clarify issues of advance width for tone letters. For Unicode 14.0.

AI Ken Whistler, Editorial Committee. Update Rules S1, S2, S3 in the Syriac Shaping subsection of Section 9.3, Syriac in the Core Specification, to explicitly add the end of text edge case. For Unicode 14.0.

F2. Late Feedback Received

The following item was received too late to be added to the General Feedback document, but is pertinent to preparation of the repertoire for Unicode 14.0 alpha review.

Date/Time: Fri Jan 15 06:59:44 CST 2021
Name: Charlotte Buff
Report Type: Feedback on an Encoding Proposal
Opt Subject: L2/19-053: Duplicate Character Name (Znamenny)

While working on a document concerning Znamenny notation, I discovered an unrelated 
flaw in the original proposal (L2/19-053): The proposed characters 
U+1CF2D and U+1CF40 were both given the exact same name – ZNAMENNY COMBINING MARK KRYZH.

Discussion:

This report is correct, and requires updating the name of either U+1CF2D or U+1CF40, so that the names are not identical. The suggestion we make is that the name of U+1CF2D be updated to:

U+1CF2D ZNAMENNY COMBINING MARK KRYZH ON LEFT

The name follows the pattern among the "red" Znamenny combining marks in the range U+1CF00..U+1CF2D of using the terms "ON LEFT" and "ON RIGHT" to distinguish left or right positioning of otherwise similar marks.

Suggested disposition:

EC-UTC166-R4: The Editorial Committee recommends that
The UTC approves a name change for the previously approved candidate character U+1CF2D to ZNAMENNY COMBINING MARK KRYZH ON LEFT

Suggested associated action item:

AI, Ken Whistler. Update the Pipeline for the name change to U+1CF2D.

G. Miscellaneous Topics

G1. (None noted)