SC22/WG20 N622
Title: 	Response to SC22 resolution 98-3 on electronic commerce
Source: 	SC22/WG20
Status: 	approved
1998-10-21

The SC22 resolution 98-3 instructed WG20 to comment on JTC 1 N5296 to the SC22 chairman by 1998-12-07. Here is the WG20 response:

WG20 appreciates the comprehensive work done by the Business Team on Electronic Commerce in JTC 1 N5296.

WG20 offers the following comments for further consideration by the SC22 chairman and JTC1:

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.

WG20 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 lacking adequate definitions for them severely damages the usability of the JTC 1 standards.

WG20 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.

WG20 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. WG20 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

WG20 strongly supports the quest for IT enablement of international standards, and it is the intent of WG20 to cooperate with the rest of JTC 1 SCs to further develop our standards to accommodate the needs for Electronic Commerce.

Further information on WG20, including information on contacts and on the standards, can be found on http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg20/