Subject: SC 22 N 3667 - Summary of Voting on SC 22 N 3614, Re-Issue of 60- Day Letter Ballot for the Proposed Project Transfer (ISO/IEC 14651) from JTC 1/SC 22 to JTC 1/SC 2

From: Matthew Deane <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:02:10 -0400

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)
 
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N3667
 
TITLE:
Summary of Voting on SC 22 N 3614, Re-Issue of 60-Day Letter Ballot for the
Proposed Project Transfer (ISO/IEC 14651) from JTC 1/SC 22 to JTC 1/SC 2

DATE ASSIGNED:
2003-10-16
 
SOURCE:
SC 22 Secretariat 

BACKWARD POINTER:
 
DOCUMENT TYPE:
Summary of Voting 
  
PROJECT NUMBER:
22.30.02.02
 
STATUS:
Per the results of this ballot, SC 22 has approved the transfer of ISO/IEC
14651 to JTC 1/SC 2.  The JTC 1/SC 2 Secretariat has informed the SC 22
Secretariat that SC 2 has approved acceptance of the project.  Therefore,
this programme of work modification will be sent to JTC 1, along with the
submitted NB comments, for final approval at the Singapore Plenary.

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
ACT
 
DUE DATE:
 
DISTRIBUTION:
Text 

CROSS REFERENCE:
SC 22 N3614
 
DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Def
 
Address reply to:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat
Matt Deane
ANSI
25 West 43rd Street
New York, NY  10036
Telephone:  (212) 642-4992
Fax:             (212) 840-2298
Email:  [email-masked] 

_________end of title page; beginning of summary of voting_______________ 

SUMMARY OF VOTING ON
 
Letter Ballot: SC22 N3614
Circulated by: JTC 1/SC22
Circulation Date: 2002-08-13
Closing Date: 2003-10-13
SUBJECT: Summary of Voting on SC 22 N 3614, Re-Issue of 60-Day Letter Ballot
for the Proposed Project Transfer (ISO/IEC 14651) from JTC 1/SC 22 to JTC
1/SC 2
---------------------------------------------------------------------- 

The following responses have been received on the subject of approval: 

"P" Members supporting approval without comment 
8 (China, Finland, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, USA) 

"P" Members supporting approval with comments 
1 (Ireland)

"P" Members not supporting approval 
5 (Canada, Germany, Republic of Korea, Netherlands, Norway)

"P" Members abstaining 
3 (Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark) 

"P" Members not voting 
8 (Belgium, Brazil, Egypt, France, DPR of Korea, Romania, Russian
Federation, Slovenia)

Note:  O-member Sweden submitted comments (see below)

__end of ballot, beginning of NB comments____

Canada
Canada opposes the transfer of project JTC1.22.30.02.02 (IS14651) from SC22
to SC2. This project is about the sorting order of strings in an
international setting, which involves much more than the order of characters
in a character set. There is a significant amount of localization,
Application Program Interfaces (APIs), language bindings and functionality
which transcend SC2 mandates. SC2 is dedicated to the development and
maintenance of character sets only, and we believe that the other issues
regarding sorting and localization will not receive the attention that they
are due if the project were moved.

The second objection is procedural. This project has existed within SC22 for
a number of years, and to our knowledge there has been no complaints or
objections to the way that SC22 manages this project. WG20 liaises well with
other SC22 WG's , with SC2, and with other SC's to ensure that their
concerns are taken into account. The risk to the project and the way that it
liaises with SC22 working groups will increase if the project is moved.

We do, however, believe that SC22/WG20 should work to reduce the
inconveniences for participants belonging to both groups by holding joint
meetings with SC2.

Germany
String Ordering is not a part of the current scope of JTC 1/SC2 .

The current scope of JTC 1/SC2 is:
"Standardization of graphic character sets and their characteristics,
associated control functions, their coded representation for
information interchange and code extension techniques. Excluded:
audio and picture coding."

The current scope of JTC1/SC2 should be extended by String Ordering, 
as described in ISO/IEC 14651.

Acceptance of these reasons and appropriate changes in the scope of 
JTC 1/SC2 will change our vote to approval.

Ireland
Ireland has maintained for many years that it is essential for the
maintenance of ISO/IEC 14651 that it be transferred from SC 22 to SC2, and
we trust that 
this will at long last happen swiftly

Republic of Korea
KATS have participated in WG20 meeting since 2001 because there are many
relation with Hangul(Korean alphabet). It is appropriate that WG20 takes
charge of project 14651 for the efficiency of work because WG20 is
responsible for internationalization in SC22 and the rest of JTC1. And it is
illogical that only the project 14651 is transferred among many standards
related to Internationalization. So KATS disapprove that the project 145651
is transferred from SC22 to SC2.

Netherlands
1. ISO/IEC 14651 is a published standard. It covers a large
number of scripts. More scripts may be added, but a need for
that has still to be demonstrated. If maintenance is not
required for the time being, discussing transfer of
responsibility is premature.

2. As our NB has pointed out in JTC1 N 7064, some TCs have
also developed standards for alphabetic ordering. It is of
primary importance that 14651 and these be harmonized. A
body, something like a WG, would be needed for this task,
but it is not obvious at all that this WG should be
dependent of SC2 only.

3. The present scope of 14651 is restricting its applicability.
National standards with a wider scope (e.g. including treatment
of composite entries) cannot be replaced by a tailored version
of 14651. This defect can be removed when harmonization with
TC37 and TC46 standards is effectuated.

4. Before making a start, a study of user requirements to a
general standard on alphabetic ordering should be made. After
its completion the way is open for a discussion on which body
should be assigned the task of development. This is wholly in
line with Recommendation 1 from the Geneva meeting (JTC1 N 7136).

Norway
There has been no severe problems with developing and maintaining the 14651
standard wrt. the repertoire till now, and it is not expected that future
additions to the ISO 10646 repertoire will create problems that WG20 cannot
handle. Furthermore there are a number of issues with the general model that
seems best handled in WG20, and the coordination with other
internationalisation work in WG20 is also important.

SC2 is welcome to send liaison statements on issues on 14651, but none have
been received on that matter so far.

Sweden
We support the project transfer with the attached comments.

14651 has been developed in SC22/WG20. Some influence from other SC22
projects have been made, in particular POSIX. There has been very little
influence from other SC22 projects.

However, there has been strong influence on 14651 from the SC2/WG2 project
on 10646, in part via people also involved with the development of Unicode.
And there is a strong incentive to keep 14651 in full synchrony with 10646
as it expands with more letters, in particular from scripts not yet encoded.
The expertise on the scripts in question goes to SC2/WG2 meetings. These
experts also have the expertise on how to alphabetically order these
scripts. 

People much involved with not only new scripts, but also implementation of
collation algorithms attend SC2/WG2 meetings. Thus, any architectural
maintenance to 14651 is also best done in SC2/WG2.

14651 needs to track the additions to 10646 very closely. When 10646 is
amended, or a new edition is issued, ideally 14651 should be amended, or a
new edition issued, in *full synchrony* with 10646. This is best done if
10646 and 14651 are maintained by the same WG, SC2/WG2.