Subject: SC22 N2858 - SC22 Response to JTC 1 re Electronic Commerce Business Team Report

From: William Rinehuls <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 17:28:20 -0500 (EST)

______________________ 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
N2858

TITLE:
SC22 Response to JTC 1 N5437, Request for National Body and Subcommittee
Comments on Document JTC 1 N5296, Electronic Commerce Business Team Report

DATE ASSIGNED:
1998-12-09

SOURCE:
Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22

BACKWARD POINTER:
N/A

DOCUMENT TYPE:
Disposition of Comments Report

PROJECT NUMBER:
N/A

STATUS:
N/A

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI

DUE DATE:
N/A

DISTRIBUTION:
Text

CROSS REFERENCE:
SC22 N2735, N2806 (res.98-3)

DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Text

Address reply to:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat
William C. Rinehuls
8457 Rushing Creek Court
Springfield, VA 22153 USA
Telephone:  +1 (703) 912-9680
Fax:  +1 (703) 912-2973
email:  [email-masked]

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ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)

Subject:  SC22 Response to JTC 1 N 5437, Request for National Body and
Subcommittee Comments on Document JTC 1 N 5296, Electronic Commerce
Business Team Report

Introduction

SC 22 appreciates the comprehensive work done by the Business Team on
Electronic Commerce in JTC 1 N 5296.

The issues of localization, multi-lingualism and cultural adaptability in
the Electronic Commerce Business Team Report are the ones most relevant
to SC 22.  Our Working Group 20 is assigned responsibility in this area.
SC 22 offers the following comments, developed by SC 22/WG 20, for
consideration by JTC 1:

Comments

The concept of localization and concept of multilingualism should be
conceptually separated in section 6.3.  JTC 1 should investigate models
for cultural adaptability that go beyond the C/C++/POSIX locale concepts.

WG 20 agrees with the statements in 12.3 about the inadequacy of
standards for language and territory codes, and would like to recommend
to JTC 1 that these problems be resolved, since they are a block to
proper enablement of electronic commerce.  A number of JTC 1 standards
are using these concepts and the lack of adequate definitions for them
severely damages the usability of the JTC 1 standards.

WG 20 would like to draw the attention to another area that is not
mentioned in the report, namely the precise identification and IT
enablement specifications for coded character sets and encodings.  The
void here could be solved by reference to ISO/IEC 15897 charmap
registrations. 

IETF has required that all new Internet protocols can handle UTF-8 and we
recommend that this decision be taken into account.

WG 20 has developed ISO/IEC TR 11017 Framework for internationalization,
which should guide JTC 1 for further work in the area of cultural and
linguistic adaptability.  WG 20 is developing a standard on sorting (FCD
14651), a specification method for cultural conventions (CD 14652), and
an API specification (WD 15435) to support IS 14651 and IS 14652, which
we recommend for IT enablement in JTC 1 with respect to cultural and
linguistic adaptability and character set handling. The cultural registry
standard (IS 15897) is recommended as a source for the data for this IT
enablement.  

These specifications should be included in the list of relevant standards
for Electronic Commerce:

TR 11017        	Framework for internationalization
FCD 14651       	International string ordering
CD 14652        	Specification method for cultural conventions
WD 15435        	Internationalization API
IS 15897        	Registry of cultural elements

WG 20 strongly supports the quest for IT enablement of international
standards, and it is the intent of WG 20 to cooperate with the rest of
JTC 1 SCs to further develop our standards to accommodate the needs for
Electronic Commerce.

Further information on WG 20, including information on contacts and on
the standards, can be found on http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg 20/

____________________ end of SC22 N2858 ______________________________