Subject: N 4117-Japanese Contribution to the September 2006 SC 22 Plenary

From: Sally Seitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 08:50:39 -0400

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)
 
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N4117
 
TITLE:
Japanese Contribution to the September 2006 SC 22 Plenary

DATE ASSIGNED:
2006-08-21
 
SOURCE:
Japan National Body

BACKWARD POINTER:
N/A
 
DOCUMENT TYPE:
National Body Contribution

PROJECT NUMBER:
N/A
 
STATUS:
This document will be discussed at the upcoming SC 22 Plenary under agenda
items 11.6 and 11.8.  

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI
 
DUE DATE:
  
DISTRIBUTION:
text

CROSS REFERENCE:
 
DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Def
 
Address reply to:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat
Sally Seitz
ANSI
25 West 43rd Street
New York, NY  10036
Telephone:  (212) 642-4918
Fax:             (212) 840-2298
Email:  [email-masked]
 _______________________________________end of cover sheet, beginning of
document__________________________
National Body of Japan Contribution to the JTC 1/SC 22 Plenary

Issue 1.  Periodical review of SC22 membership

SC22 has suffered from the 50% rule.  Several recent ballots in SC22, for
example N4013 (disbandment of WG3 - APL) and N4015 (approval of 05-30a -
15897), failed because the number of voting countries was less than 50% of
the number of P members.  In order to avoid such undesirable results, SC22
has long been asking JTC1 to remove those countries not responding to SC22
ballots from the list of SC22 P members.

This request was recently implemented, and the number of P members is now
18, which was 21 before this action.  The newest ballot,
N4067 (approval of 05-30b - 15897) escaped from the failure.

However, our situation is not quite safe.  The number of voting countries
for N4067 was 10 (the number reported in N4067 is not correct, since it
includes an O member).  10/18 is more than 50%, but the margin is not large.
If two countries accidentally failed to vote, SC22 ballots will easily fail.
This seems to be dangerous for us.

Japan proposes to constantly review the voting status of current P members,
and to change the status of not voting countries if any.  Never ending
periodical review is essential.  The desirable time interval would be one
year or two years.

Issue 2.  Transfer of 15897 to SC35

Japan objects to Canada's proposal to transfer 15897 to SC35.

ISO/IEC 15897 (Procedures for Registration of Cultural Elements), which was
initially a fast track proposal from CEN, defines registration mechanisms
for locales.  These locales are supposed to be referred to by operating
systems such as Posix.  Therefore, its scope is within that of SC22
(programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces).

It is not reasonable to transfer a project within SC22's scope to another
SC.  If it is implemented, SC22's action would be constrained by the
decision made in another SC.  This is curious, and is not acceptable for us.

If it is really desirable to transfer 15897 to SC35, Japan recommends to
firstly cancel the current project, and to propose a new project in SC35.
In this case, the scope of the new project should be an appropriate one for
the scope of SC35, which is user interface.

SC22 has experiences to transfer projects to SC2.  However, the scope of
those projects transferred was really within that of SC2.  Annex A of
ISO/IEC TR 10176 was transferred, but this is the definition of a certain
character sets closely related to ISO/IEC 10646 which is maintained by SC2.
ISO/IEC 14651 (international string ordering and comparison - method for
comparing character strings and description of the common template
tailorable ordering) was also transferred.  This standard defines the
comparison methods for characters and strings, which is naturally considered
to be in the scope of SC2.

===================================================================

Sally Seitz
Program Manager
American National Standards Institute
25 West 43rd Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10036
Tel: 212 642 4918
Fax: 212 840 2298