From lrajchel@ANSI.org Sun Sep 10 11:32:30 2000 Received: from email1.ansi.org (mail.ansi.org [165.254.114.6]) by dkuug.dk (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id LAA85891; Sun, 10 Sep 2000 11:32:30 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from lrajchel@ANSI.org) Received: by email1.ansi.org with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) id ; Sun, 10 Sep 2000 05:31:35 -0400 Message-ID: <2F81C8110D55D411882A0020356797B21516C9@email1.ansi.org> From: Lisa Rajchel To: "'sc22info@dkuug.dk'" Cc: "'Simonsen, Keld'" Subject: SC 22 N 3175 - National Activity Report of Canada to the Plenary Meeting of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22, September 12-15, 2000 Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 05:31:29 -0400 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) _____________________beginning of title page___________ ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces Secretariat: U.S.A. (ANSI) ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N3175 TITLE: National Activity Report of Canada to the Plenary Meeting of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22, September 12-15, 2000 DATE ASSIGNED: 2000-09-10 SOURCE: National Body of Canada BACKWARD POINTER: N/A DOCUMENT TYPE: National Body Activity Report PROJECT NUMBER: STATUS: This document will be discussed under Agenda Item 7.2.9 at the JTC 1/SC 22 Plenary Meeting. ACTION IDENTIFIER: FYI to SC22 Member Bodies DUE DATE: N/A DISTRIBUTION: text CROSS REFERENCE: DISTRIBUTION FORM: Def Lisa Rajchel ANSI 11 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036 Telephone: (212) 642-4932 Fax: (212) 840-2298 Email: lrajchel@ansi.org _____________________end of title page______________ Canadian National Report to SC22 Plenary Sept 2000 National Activities Canada is represented to SC22 by delegates from the Canadian Standards Association Committee on Programming Languages. We currently have activity in WG3/APL, WG9/Ada, WG14/C, WG15/POSIX, WG19/Formal Languages, WG20/Internationalization, WG21/C++, and JSG. CPL meets quarterly to discuss national and international business in these languages. Most international standards in these languages and other langugages are also made Canadian national standards. This year Canada is hosting WG 14 and WG 21 in Toronto in October. Membership As with most countries we are challenged by shrinking membership and to maintain active working groups. Much of the reason is that most SC22 activities are largely in maintenance mode and there may be a perception that there is little exciting to be done in this field. It is unfortunate that the recent most exciting activity, Java, was handled poorly by the copywrite owner. Restructuring of WG20 We believe that I18N is a fundamental requirement on programming languages. We further believe that programming languages pay insufficient attention to all of the internationalization issues. It would be a mistake to curtail or weaken this work through the disbandment of WG20. The fact that it is a JTC1 strategic direction clearly shows its importance. While it is true that SC2 liaises with SC22, we believe that the active presence of WG20 members at plenary and on SC22 mailing lists has helped to give internationalization more visibility and attention in PLs than it would have otherwise received. JSG With regret we support the disbandment of the JSG. The machinations that SC22, ISO and ECMA/TC41 went through in trying to come to terms with Sun clearly shows the different pressures and reactions of international standards groups and corparate entities. We hope that the lesson of Sun is not lost on SC22 or on JTC1 as it attempts to deal with the JTC1 restructuring proposals that are now under active consideration. JTC1 restructuring Canada has reservations with the JTC1 restructuring proposals as they are presently being considered. While we agree that international standardization has seen a drop in activity while there has been a rise in the role of consortia, we do not accept that this means, as some have said, that JTC1 is irrelevant. On the contrary, we observe that ISO/IEC standardization is a prize that is sought by many companies and organizations. This would not be the case if such standards were irrelevant. We note that many succesful standards have been developed and are being used under the ISO/IEC umbrella. Many others are being developed and brought to JTC1 through the internal processes and fast track procedures. There have been expressions that JTC1 processes are too slow. If this is true, then we prefer to see mechanisms in place to simplify existing processes (such as letting SCs create their own work items) and work with existing consortia to develop standards and bring them to JTC1 instead of turning the representation on SCs upside down. As a small country we experience the influence that companies can excert over even countries as large as ours. We are not convinced that competitiveness and openness are served by permitting large commercial organizations equal voice with national bodies in SC balloting. Should SC22 wish to let companies participate, we will not support motions that give commercial entities a voice equivalent to national bodies, or that exclude smaller organizations through fee structures. We do not think that the proposals being considered by JTC1 are applicable to SC22. since the majority of work in SC22 has a large maintenance component and most SC22 activities are fairly stable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen Michell Maurya Software Inc Software Solutions 29 Maurya Court for a Distributed Ottawa, Ontario Heterogenous Canada K1G 5S3 World steve@maurya.on.ca tel: 613 720 5701 (w) 613 739 9695 (h)