Subject: Call for participation

From: Borka Jerman-Blazic <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Jun 1996 14:25:32 +0200

CEN/TC304 - Character Set Technology
                                  Workshop

  Providing multilingual support in middleware: Implementing the Universal
        Character Set ISO 10646 in the European Information Society

                       11 November - 12 November 1996

                              Bled , Slovenia

                             FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Organized by   CEN/TC304 - Character Set Technology

 Sponsored by   Commission of European Union, DG3

                Ministry of Science and Technology, Slovenia

                Slovenian Chapter of Internet Society

 Programme      committee

                prof. Borka Jerman Blazic - chair, IJS, Slovenia

                Wolf Arfvidson, Statskontoret, Sweden

                Thorvardur Kari Olafsson, STRI. Iceland

                Michael Everson, EGT, Ireland

   * Venue
   * Preamble
   * Background
   * Who should attend
   * Scope
   * Call for proposals
   * Language
   * Accomodation
   * Practical Information
   * Important dates
   * Fee
   * Registration information
   * Additional information

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Venue

Grand Hotel Toplice
4260 Bled
Slovenia
Tel.: + 386 64 7910
Fax : + 386 64 741 841
Email: [email-masked]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Preamble

Development of the Universal Character Set makes it possible for the first
time in Europe to serve the needs of small nationalities in computing
environments as well as the larger market communities who themselves must
urgently implement solutions to the problem of multilingual computing within
the European Community and the European Information Society. This CEN/TC304
workshop will focus on solutions to this urgent language engineering task
and on raising awareness of this need among members of the Information and
Communition Technology R&D community.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Background

The requirement for a detailed, intention-driven plan for the implementation
of Character Set Technology (CST) in the European Information Society has
been recognized and identified by standardizers in the public sector as well
as by developers in the private sector. New emphasis on internationalization
and localization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products
has been a welcome response to the recognition of European cultural and
linguistic diversity. (Internationalization deals with making software and
network services which are easily configurable to the user's own preferred
linguistic and cultural environment; localization is the translation and
configuration of software (ideally already internationalized software) into
local languages so that users may work in the linguistic environment of
their choice with the application over an open network).

Coordination of effort in implementation of ISO/IEC 10646 (Universal
Character Set - UCS) in an internationalized environment should now be the
main focus of developers working in the field of CST. In this way the needs
of small nationalities as well as of larger markets can be met, considering
that many language engineering projects are concerned with UCS
implementation but may not be taking such urgent needs into account.

CEN TC304 has already contributed user requirements met by developing the
European subsets of UCS (CEN ENV 12005) that covers the repertoires of all
indigenous languages of Europe and the standard for registration of cultural
elements required in the information technology applications (CEN ENV 1973)
and many more. But there are still problems to be solved. The way to do this
is by focusing on (in no particular order):

  1. Production of useful ICT standards to guide industry
  2. Effective dissemination of requirements to public procurers
  3. Provision by Industry of the broadest internationalization and
     localization support possible (i.e. inclusive of minorities)
  4. Implementation of ISO/IEC 10646, expansion of ISO/IEC 10646 for
     European needs (e.g. historical scripts and characters)
  5. Attention to growing and changing user requirements and to special user
     groups (e.g. the handicapped and elderly)

Europe requires the integration of all of the above into something which is
a European solutions, rather than just one of a number of a national
solutions. Communication of large amounts of textual information, rapid
translation of electronic messages, access to multilingual databases,
multilingual user interfaces, multilingual help facilities, multilingual
grammar and style checkers, machine identification of travel documents etc.
are all a part of this.

The new environment which will be brought to the European users implies
development of new character repertoire solutions and a clear migration
strategy for the current existing solutions and equipment. It is a new
challenge to the standardization community concerned with
internationalisation of ICT and CST in Europe.

The workshop organized by CEN Technical Committee TC304 will endeavour to
clarify and discuss the direction of CST and internationalization
implementations and the design and development of such implementations. The
context is European: the infrastructure for multi-lingual communication
services and ICT products on which the European Single Market depends. This
workshop will be a forum for the exchange of information and requirements by
standardizers and by researchers and developers in industry. It will
reinforce the links with the ICT R&D community in Europe and will be
relevant to consortia participating in the Fourth Framework.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Who should attend

We welcome participants from all over Europe and other with similar
problems. We welcome users and implementors, public procures, end users,
linguists, manufacturers, standardizers and everybody that can help solve
the problems n implement the right standards. At least the following
organizations will be invited:

   * National Standards organizations (members of CEN)
   * Members of ETSI and EWOS
   * Public procurers: members of SOGITS and PPG
   * Individual experts from standardization committees: ISO/IEC/JTC1/SCs,
     ECMA, EWOS, ETSI, CENELEC
   * End users: Language committes, ETSI/HF, Ergonomy/disability inst. and
     TCs
   * Applications: Bibliographers (ISO/46), terminologists (ISO/37), EDIFACT
     (WE-EB), etc.
   * CEC (DGIII, DGXIII, INFO 2000, END, IDA, Language Engineering),
     CEN/TC224, CEN/TC225
   * Producers: ECMA, Unicode, EUREKA/AV, other ICT companies
   * User organizations: CECUA , ECTUA, SHARE, DECUS, EurOpen
   * Service providers: TERENA, PTTs, SPIRIT, EUNet

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Scope

The aim is to discuss all obstacles and problems in the European way towards
information society with rich cultural diversity. The aim is also to achieve
better relationships and broad contacts for exchange of information between
standards developers, implementors, and users. We have identified the user
needs -- now we must give guidance toward realizing those needs. Working
together with industry, standardizers can influence development as well as
create real standards -- not just de-facto market standards -- ensuring
closer and better European ICT cohesion, helping to solve problems of
multilingual support within the European Community, the European Information
Society, and worldwide. ISO 10646, the Universal Character Set, provides the
potential for representing all of Europe's written languages on everyone's
machines, both at home and at work, and is key to the successful
implementation of ICT requirements in Europe.

The main benefit of this workshop will be to raise the awareness among the
participants of work which is ongoing or incipient, so that they can look
for it, recommend it to others, and press their local and international
suppliers for it. An example: if Slovenians learn that there is a new
internationalization API and European registry for cultural elements and
specifications, they can demand the correct implementation of their
character set, date and time formats, and keyboards of their local hardware
and software vendors, who may either implement them locally or request them
of a parent company. In particular, the workshop will discuss at least the
following questions:

   * How can the obstacles to effective multi-lingual exchange of data be
     overcome?
   * How should the requirements regarding Character Set support be
     implemented?????

   * How will this meet the needs of translation offices?
   * How is industry implementing text-oriented services and software?
   * Where can standards solve the problems?
   * How can we make up the deficiencies within existing standards?
   * How do standards committees cooperate better?
   * How can we ensure that industry use standardization expertise (rather
     than ignoring everything but the market)?
   * Which CST standards will be needed by future IT-applications?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Call for proposals

Users and implementors, public procures, end users, linguists,
manufacturers, standardizers are all invited to submit 1/2 page abstract
with topics relevant to the workshop scope.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Language

The language of the Workshop will be English.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Accomodation

The moderate price accomodation is organised.

            Rooms incl. breakfast            Price in DEM

  Grand hotel Toplice

  - twinbedded lakeview                          180

  - twinbedded lakeview - single occupancy       150

  - twinbedded                                   150

  - single lakeview                              120

  - single                                       100

  Annex hotel Jadran

  - single lakeview                               80

  Annex hotel Trst

  - single lakeview                               80

  - single                                        70

  Supplement for half board per person/day
  (minimum 3 days)                                30

You can book now already in

Grand Hotel Toplice
4260 Bled
Slovenia
Tel.: + 386 64 7910
Fax : + 386 64 741 841
Email: [email-masked]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Practical Information

Bled is about 50 km NW from the capital Ljubljana, and 32 km NW from
Ljubljana Airport.

                                 Travel Maps and more information
                      Look at URL
                   http://www.e5.ijs.si/i18n/ws-bled.html
                                
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Important dates

 30.6.1996    Submission of abstract

 30.9.1996    Acknowledgment of acceptance

 31.10.1996   Full papers

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Fee

60 ECU for early registration and payment before October 11
80 ECU after October 11
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Registration information

Please fill in the Registration form :

First Name :
Last/Family Name :
Title :
Company/Organization :
Street Address :
City :
State :
Zip/Postal Code :
Country :
Telephone :
Fax :
E-Mail Address :
Do you plan to submit  paper: No Yes
Title of paper :

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

        Additional information

Specific questions regarding the workshop may be directed to:
[email-masked]

or

Borka Jerman-Blazic
IJS
Jamova 39
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Tel.: + 386 61 1773 408
Fax : + 386 123 21 18
Email: [email-masked]

or

Torvardur Kari Olafsson
Icelandic Council for Standardization (STRÍ)
Keldnaholt
IS-112 Reykjavik
Iceland
Tel.: + 354 587 7000
Fax : + 354 587 7409
Email : [email-masked]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------