CAW N 14

A proposal on the Internationalization related activities of JTC 1

1997-12-10
Akio Kido
(Personal contribution)

Proposal

  1. The JTC 1/WG5 should not be merged with other groups, such as JTC 1/SC2 or JTC 1/SC22/WG20.
  2. Merge SC22/WG11 and WG20 then having a new WG that is responsible to establish cross language standards in the manner being language independent. The WG15 (POSIX) also may be able to be merged into the new WG, too. The development project of IS 15435 (Internationalization API) should be executed by the WG. The WG11's expertise on the language independent specifications will contribute to the development of the IS 15435.
  3. Maintain SC2 as an individual TD for Coding. The TD should have the responsibility not only for coding of character but also for other data coding. However, the codling technologies that have already assigned to other TC or SC, such as picture coding, are not necessary to be transferred to the TD consists of SC2.
  4. Transfer development project of IS 14651 International String Ordering and IS 14652 Specification method of cultural convention set from SC22/WG20 to the TD.
  5. Establish a new rapporture group under the JTC 1, and assign two tasks to the group. The first task is to work as the single focal point in JTC 1 that has JTC 1 wide responsibility for "Internationalization". The scope should not be restricted in the scope of SC22, then provides internal services to TD/SC/WGs outside of SC22 as well. The services would include; review and comments to CDs developed by a SC/WG in the JTC1 from the viewpoint of internationalization, and provide consulting service to the SC/WG, per request. The second task is to perform two years study on further standardization works for culture adaptation. The resulting report of the study should answer to the question what kinds of standards or guidance are required to ensure culture adaptability of information technologies? The study should be performed in the manner being application (e.g., CALS and E-Commerce) oriented, not application platform oriented, and focus on the issues beyond the functionality of programming languages and operating systems. Perhaps, the issues may exist about complex cultural conventions such as the difference of business process, business customs, and regulations.

Rationale for the project transfer of IS 14651 and IS 14652

Since the IS 14651 is the international ordering standard based on the ISO/IEC 10646, it has tight relation with the development/amendment activity of the ISO/IEC 10646. In other words, synchronized with the amendments of ISO/IEC 10646, the IS 14651 also need to be amended to keep the consistency between those standards. Therefore, the developing activity of IS 14651 should be preformed under the TD who is responsible for the ISO/IEC 10646. The project transfer of the IS 14651 from the SC22/WG20 to the TD(SC2) will contribute to ensure consistency and synchronization between ISO/IEC 10646 and IS 14651.

The IS 14652 (Specification method of cultural convention set) does not have direct relation with the ISO/IEC 10646, but the IS 14651 rely on the specification method of collation definition table to the IS 14652. In other words, without having the IS 14652, the IS 14651 can not enter to the FCD/DIS ballot. Therefore, it is recommendable to execute the development projects of IS 14652 in the same body who is responsible to the IS 14651.

Background and rationale for establishing new rapporture group

Last seven years, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22/WG20 has been working as a single focal point of Internationalization in JTC 1, and has been producing Internationalization related Technical Reports and Standards for Programming Languages. As the result, the concept of Internationalization becomes popular in the SC22, and each WG under the SC22, such as COBOL, can develop its standard in the manner being fully internationalized. However, the scope of the WG was actually limited within the scope of the SC22, thus the WG20 did not provide any services to WGs outside of the SC22.

If we consider about culture adaptability of information technologies now being focused in the industry, such as CALS and worldwide E-Commerce, the internationalization work in the area of the SC22 might not be good enough. On the top of internationalization functionality of SC22 standards, business applications and/or worldwide network applications need to provide functionality that is adapted to the business customs or regulations of the target country/region. The functionality is beyond the scope of traditional locale provided by non-Object-Oriented programming languages and POSIX. The traditional locale only contains information related with coded character sets and quite simple culture sensitive presentation of a data. Because of the nature of application platform, SC22 standard can only provide internationalization functionality that rely on static descriptions of culture convention set (locale) stored in the platform, but not rely on the rule-sets that are subject to be changed dynamically. Only application components, such as business objects, developed by using SC22 standards can provide the support to the dynamic culture convention set, such as accounting rule and tax system. Object-Oriented technologies that support new concept of locale introduced by Java, with class loading mechanism will enable application to perform dynamic binding of the culture sensitive business objects at execution time. Note that the Java's "locale" is just name of the target culture and does not have direct relation with any description of the cultural convention set stored in the local system. Such dynamic binding mechanism of culture sensitive application components may be called as application locale in order to distinguish it from traditional platform locale.

In order to ensure the culture adaptability of information technology at the level of application, the following works may be required:

  1. Identify cultural differences beyond the functionality of application platforms, but need to be addressed to ensure culture adaptability of applications. The difference of business customs, business processes, regulations, import/export tax, and currency exchange rates might be candidates of those cultural differences.
  2. Establish a standardized method to support Multiple culture adaptability. Current POSIX locale model is just for localizing a culture independent system to a language and cultural environment. It is assumed that its culture related information (locale) is stored in the local system statically. In order to support inter culture communication, a dynamic access mechanism to the culture related information located at remote system would be required. Otherwise, an application can not be adapted to multiple cultures of expected users, i.e., local user and remote user. For example, there are two users assumed for a commerce application, i.e., seller and buyer, and the seller may be live in a different culture/country of the buyer. In such case, the commerce application need to check regulations of both countries to ensure if a goods can be shipped from sellers country to buyers', and present its price in the both currencies considering the import tax of the buyers country and exchange rate of those currencies. The information of the import/export regulation may be provided by governments and the information of the exchange rate may be provided by an international bank, but never exist in the local system.
  3. Establish universal data representation (coding) of data other than coded character sets. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC2/WG2 did make a good job to establish the universal character set (ISO/IEC 10646) that every local coded character set can be mapped to. Then by using the universal coded character set as information exchange code, or as processing code, information integrity can be guaranteed across different scripts/coded character set environments. Such universal data representation may also be required out side of coded character set area. For example, universal data representation method of measurement systems would be required. Without having any universal data representation of "length", perhaps meter system might be good enough, a user in the yard system can not communicate with the user who is in another fanny measurement system. In order to guarantee the data integrity between different systems, a data represented by a system need to be converted to the culture independent universal system in the local side, then transferred to the remote system. The data also should be converted again in the remote system from the universal system to the another local convention. Thus the data can be presented in the meaningful manner to both side of users. This concept should be applied to more complex measurement systems such as size of shoes.