Subject: Response to comments from Mr. Alain LaBont<e'>

From: Willem Wakker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 93 11:39:12 N

Dear Colleagues,

In response to Alain LaBont<e'>'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.

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Willem Wakker					 email: <[email-masked]>
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