From comp@komp.ace.nl Fri Dec 10 11:38:11 1993 Received: from komp.ace.nl by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA18415 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Fri, 10 Dec 1993 11:38:11 +0100 Received: by komp.ace.nl with SMTP id AA24784 (1.10/2.17); Fri, 10 Dec 93 11:39:16 +0100 (MET) To: sc22@dkuug.dk, sc22wg11@dkuug.dk, i18n@dkuug.dk Subject: Response to comments from Mr. Alain LaBont Date: Fri, 10 Dec 93 11:39:12 N Message-Id: <24770.755519952@komp> From: Willem Wakker X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 Dear Colleagues, In response to Alain LaBont's comments I want to make a few points clear: 1- As stated in my original email (apologies to those who have not received that email in the first place: I realize that it can be difficult to appreciate email responses to messages which are part of discussions that you were not following) WG11 took great effort to (try to) understand the Canadian requirements on the specific datatype, and then to investigate whether it was necessary and possible (timewise) to define and include the requested datatype. You have seen our conclusion, and Alains response does not give us any (new) facts which could merit a reconsideration. 2- Nobody within WG11 doubts to positive intention from Alain in (as he states it) `getting out of the mess we are in in character string compare/ sort/search'. However, it is NOT the task of WG11 to resolve this `mess'. WG11 has the obligation (and as convenor I should say that we have fulfilled this obligation) to evaluate proposals for datatypes which could be included in LID. If these proposed datatypes could enable the production of tools that could alleviate this `mess', so much the better. And this was precisely the reason we took all the effort to investigate the proposals. What WG11 was asked to do is to include a datatype with certain properties and operations. The base documentation, cited to support the datatype, does not fully describe the datatype upto the level needed for WG11 to be able to include the datatype in LID. For instance, the Canadian standard gives itself a limited scope (only a few languages). It is not the task of WG11 to investigate the full applicability of this standard to say Chinese. It is good to hear from Alain that work is underway in this area, but one cannot expect WG11 either to contribute to this work, or even to wait for the results of this work. 3- Despite the positive ending of Alains comments, his message contains a number of serious personal accusations (the suggestion of not having an open mind, and even intellectual terrorism). I consider these serious statements against WG11, and in particular against the members of WG11 who have spend large amounts of time in trying to come to an agreement with Alain on the issues he raised. I think that these accusations are highly unfair and not deserved. I hope that I do not fall in the same trap when I point out to those who are less familiar with the matter that (1) SC22/WG15 POSIX has never asked for the datatype to support their Locales, (2) during the last SC22 plenary the WG20 representative told me that the issue of the datatype was never discussed in WG20 and (3) all references to support the requested datatype (the Canadian Standard and the SHARE document) are based on work done by Alain. In other words: everything points back to Alain, and only to him. Does this make the requested datatype less needed? Maybe not. Maybe Alain is one of the very few people in this world with the right vision. But is is not the task of WG11 to validate this vision, without further support from other experts. 4- Conclusion: WG11 is willing to cooperate with anyone in this field to sort out the mess, but only based on complete proposals that are duly supported by the experts in the field. It is our judgment that this has not been the case with the Canadian proposal. Regards, Willem Wakker, convener SC22/WG11. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Willem Wakker email: cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc ACE Associated Computer Experts bv ...!mcsun!ace!willemw van Eeghenstraat 100 tel: +31 20 6646416 1071 GL Amsterdam fax: +31 20 6750389 The Netherlands eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee