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| DOC TYPE:
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Business Plan
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| TITLE:
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SC 2 Business Plan to the JTC 1 Plenary Meeting
in Rio, Brazil, 1999-01
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| SOURCE:
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K. Shibano, Chairman, and Secretariat
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| PROJECT:
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--
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| STATUS:
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This document has been submitted to JTC 1
for consideration at the JTC 1 Plenary Meeting in Rio, Brazil, 1999-01.
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| ACTION ID:
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FYI
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| DUE DATE:
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| DISTRIBUTION:
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P, O and L Members of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2
WG Conveners, Secretariats ISO/IEC JTC 1 Secretariat ISO/IEC ITTF |
| NO. OF PAGES:
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6
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| ACCESS LEVEL:
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Open
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| WEB ISSUE #:
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040
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PERIOD COVERED: May 1998 - December 1998
SUBMITTED BY: Kohji Shibano (SC 2 Chairman) and Toshiko Kimura (SC 2 Secretariat)
1. MANAGEMENT SUMMARY:
1a CHAIRMAN'S REMARK
Since SC 2 did not have plenary meeting during this reporting period, only project status has been updated to reflect current SC 2 status.
1.1 JTC 1 SC 2 STATEMENT OF SCOPE
Title: Coded Character Set
Scope: Standardization of graphic character sets and their characteristics, associated control functions, their coded representation for information interchange and code extension techniques. Excluded: audio and picture coding.
1.2 PROJECT REPORT
Number of Projects:
SC 2 has 68 projects/subprojects.
New subprojects:
Since the last JTC 1 Plenary in Sendai, the following new subprojects
have been proposed. They are now being balloted in SC 2.
Reactivated Projects:
1.3 COOPERATION AND COMPETITION
SC 2 is playing the key role in the area of coded character set standardization.
Discussions with ISO/TC 46 on the transfer of their coded character set standards to SC 2 are still underway.
SC 2 has been very successful in cooperation with SC 18, SC 21, SC 22, SC 31.
SC 2 has also been successful in cooperation with external standard organizations, such as ITU-T, CEN/TC 304, and with industry consortia, such as Unicode Inc. and GSE (Guide Share Europe).
For SC 2/WG 2/IRG (Ideographic Rapporteur Group) work, TCA (Taiwan) and HKITF (Hong Kong) provided important contributions. For Mongolian script extension of ISO/IEC 10646-1, UNU (United Nations University) provided an important contribution.
2.0 PERIOD REVIEW
2.1 MARKET REQUIREMENTS,
Increased new supports of ISO/IEC 10646-1 can be found. Especially, important international requirements can be found in the area of the Internet. Java language is based on ISO/IEC 10646-1 (Unicode). XML and HTML 4.0 now support ISO/IEC 10646-1. Partial information relating to ISO/IEC 10646-1 can be obtained through Unicode Inc. on the Internet but not from SC 2.
Widespread use of the Internet technologies, such as WWW, even an ordinal person now faces with and has to use ISO standard such as 8859 series of standards and 10646.
Therefore, easy access to SC 2 standards is crucial to avoid confusions between users and implementators.
Since coded character set is a basis of all information technologies. Increased connections from developing countries to the Internet require support for new coded characters for these countries. New requirements came from Asian scripts, such as Taana, Khmer, Burmese, Syriac. For new European currency, Euro, requires a new code point. At its last plenary, basic agreement for the treatment of Euro symbol in SC 2 standards has been reached.
2.2 ACHIEVEMENTS,
The following progress has been made during this period.
Published projects: 19
2.3 RESOURCES
SC 2 should be considered as one of the largest SCs in JTC 1 in terms of membership. The number of current P-member National Bodies is 37 and O-member National Bodies is eight. All WGs and all developing projects have assigned officials. In this sense, SC 2 has sufficient resources.
3.0 FOCUS NEXT WORK PERIOD
3.1 DELIVERABLES:
The following projects are expected to be published during the next reporting period.
ISO/IEC 10646
18.01.17 - 10646-1/Amd 17: CJK Unified Ideographs Extension
18.01.18 - 10646-1/Amd 18: Symbols and Others
18.01.18 - 10646-1/Amd 21: Sinhala
20.15 - 8859 Part 15: Latin 9
8859 Series
20.15 - 8859 Part 15: Latin 9
3.2 STRATEGIES:
In response to JTC 1 CAW recommendations, SC 2 recommends to JTC 1 that the proposed Technical Direction consist of a single SC with a scope reflecting cultural adaptability requirements. (see JTC 1 N 5305)
SC 2 should focus on the following three areas;
(1) Provide easy access to SC 2 standards,
(2) Support for new character coding requirements from developing countries,
(3) Clarification of character coding schemes.
3.2.1 RISKS
Most of the information concerning SC 2's standards can be obtained through the Internet but official standard itself can not be obtained through the Internet. Without availability of definitive information, that is SC 2 standards, through the Internet, it may cause a confusion of user communities and implementors.
Delay of SC 2 standard development may cause to cease new entries from developing countries to global information arena.
In the past, Latin coding has been regarded as obvious. However, there remain some ambiguities. Basically, SC 2 concepts of graphic characters are based on type writer technology not on real printing technology. Thus some people consider that Latin-1 can not support proper French and Polish. Therefore, we have to clarify these points.
3.2.2 OPPORTUNITIES
SC 2 standards are and have been really effective for information interchange. However, as for internal processing codes, implementators' private coded character sets have been widely used.
Growing interests and requirements for real global information processing, there is an opportunities for SC 2 standards not only for information interchange but for information processing including internationalized software portabilities.
3.3 WORK PROGRAM PRIORITIES
Enhancement of ISO/IEC 10646-1 is still the highest priority. Revision and enhancement of 8859 series of standards are also important.
Revision of ISO/IEC 10646-1 and 10646-2 will be important.