From owner-sc22wg5@open-std.org Fri Feb 11 00:56:31 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: sc22wg5-domo1 Delivered-To: sc22wg5-domo1@open-std.org Received: by open-std.org (Postfix, from userid 521) id EE7C514C8B; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:56:31 +0100 (CET) X-Original-To: sc22wg5@open-std.org Delivered-To: sc22wg5@open-std.org Received: from dkuug.dk (ptah.dkuug.dk [195.215.30.66]) by open-std.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C288C572A for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:56:29 +0100 (CET) Received: from fmailm2.svr.pol.co.uk (fmailm2.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.193.218]) by dkuug.dk (8.12.10/8.9.2) with ESMTP id j1ANr1wE095651 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:53:12 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from miles@bluechiplearning.com) Received: from [195.92.195.172] (helo=cmailg2.svr.pol.co.uk) by fmailm2.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.41) id 1CzNaC-0006c6-Gx for sc22wg5@dkuug.dk; Thu, 10 Feb 2005 23:18:48 +0000 Received: from modem-824.baboon.dialup.pol.co.uk ([81.78.19.56]) by cmailg2.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.14) id 1CzNa9-0002z5-6X for sc22wg5@dkuug.dk; Thu, 10 Feb 2005 23:18:45 +0000 User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.0.6 Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 23:18:46 +0100 Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.3223) Internationalization From: Miles Ellis To: WG5 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20050210101534.B4C5612E30@open-std.org> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0 () Sender: owner-sc22wg5@open-std.org Precedence: bulk On 10/2/05 11:18 am John Reid said: > WG5, > > At the Jeju meeting of SC22 in September 2004, it was decided to make > a fresh start re internationalization, see resolution 04-22 in > > http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/open/n3813.pdf > I think you mean Resolution 04-21 ;-) . . > With the encouragement > of Makki Takata, I have prepared a short statement of our > Internationalization Policy, based on his draft. This is attached. > Does anyone have any comments? As both a former convenor of WG5 and, for several years, head of the UK delegation to WG20 I think that John and Makki's statement sums up the position very well. One of the (many) problems with WG20 was its unwillingness to accept that program portability was, for many people, a higher priority than full i18n. (I remember arguing for a long time with Alain Labonte and Keld Simonsen on this topic, but was completely unable to make them understand that passing the source code through a conversion program which would, for example, change multi-byte identifier names to single byte names was not what we meant by portability!) So I think that the balance in the statement is absolutely correct. It shows that Fortran has been adopting i18n features for the last 15 years in response to the requirements of our user community and that it will continue to do so as and when required. In order to emphasise that our i18n decisions have been, and will continue to be, dependant upon the requirements of OUR user community I would suggest that the second sentence be modified to read as follows: "Fortran 90 included features to allow multi-byte character variables, which were added at the request of the Japanese member body to facilitate programming by the CJK community, and these have continued with later revisions." [Note: CJK is the acronym commonly used in the character coding world for Chinese-Japanese-Korean - these being the three main multibyte character sets.] And I wish Malcolm every good fortune in this new SC22 attempt to get some order into the i18n world! Miles