ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 N 3012
DATE: 1998-01-12

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 N 3012

Report of the Seventh Plenary Meeting of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2, 
Iraklion-Crete, Greece, 1997-07-08/09

2. Roll call of delegates
The meeting had 35 participants from 19 P-member National Bodies, one O-member NBs and eight Liaison organizations. The NB of Latvia participated as an observer. The participants' list is attached as Attachment A.

3. Remarks by host
Mr. Melagrakis on behalf of the Greece NB, ELOT, welcomed the participants.

4. Adoption of Agenda
SC 2 N 2935 was approved with some modifications. The items for working group activity were moved prier to Item 6. This report follows the initial agenda order.

5. Appointment of Drafting Committee
The Drafting committee consisted of the following individuals:
Mr. Melagrakis (Greece), Dr. Umamaheswaran (Canada), Mr. Ksar (USA) and Mr. Katoh (Japan), Prof. Shibano (acting chairman) and Ms. Kimura (Secretariat)

6. Reports from the 6th SC 2 Plenary Meeting
There was no remaining action item according to Document N 2756.

7. Report of Secretariat
The secretariat report was contained in Document: SC 2 N 2873. Participants were asked to inform the Secretariat if they find any errors.

8. Reports and Review of JTC 1 Activities Affecting SC 2
The acting chairman reviewed the results of the JTC 1 Paris Plenary Meeting, 1996-12. He called the participants' attention especially to the following items:

• NP Acceptance Criteria SC 2 N 2810

In addition to the current procedure, NP proposers are required to provide the new proforma.
• Business Plan

In replacement of SC Management reports, SC chairs are asked to submit a business plan to each JTC 1 Plenary. The new template is contained in JTC 1 N 4478.
• NB Support for Project Subdivision

SC Secretariat's reports to JTC 1 should indicate level of National Body support and rationale for each subdivision proposal. SC 2's action is needed for future subdivisions.
• New DIS Procedures

The new procedure and its transition schedule are contained in SC 2 N 2814, N 2815.

8.3 JTC 1 ad hoc on Implementation of IT
Mr. K. Simonsen who represented SC 2 at the JTC 1 ad hoc meeting on Implementing Technology held in Denmark in June 1997 reported the progress of discussion of this group. His report is contained in SC 2 N 2930.

9. Reports and review of ISO/IEC Activities
Document N 2844, N 2845, N 2846 were concerning copyright policy in ISO. These documents were for information only.

10. Reports of Working Groups and Project Editors

10. 1 WG 2 - Multiple octet codes
Mr. M. Ksar, Convener, reported the activities of WG 2. He presented Resolutions of the 33rd WG 2 meeting (N 2927). SC 2 Resolution M07.05, M07.07, M07.08 to M07.10 and M07.11 (see SC 2 N 2940) cover SC 2's decision/approval on further processing of WG 2 projects.

The new subdivisions of 10646-1 were also proposed. Item 11.1 of this report covers this subject.

In addition, the Convener reported that in the meetings in Singapore and in Crete, several characters have been accepted for inclusion in the standard and he encouraged National Bodies to support other NBs.

10.1.2 IRG Report
Mr. Zhang Zhoucai reported on its activity of IRG including the following items:
Annex T - for CJKV - DAM 8 will be completed.
PDAM-13 - IHS -- has been reviewed by all IRG members. This is mature enough, and it can be proposed as FPDAM for processing in SC2.
WD for AMD 17 - CJKV extension A is in progress
WD for AMD 15 - Radicals has some problems; Kang-Xi Radicals and numbers. WG 2 accepted 31 radicals. IRG members proposed more.

10. 2 WG 3 - 7-bit and 8-bit codes and their extension
Mr. E. Melagrakis presented the Resolutions from the 12th meeting of WG 3 (SC 2 N 2933). Resolution M07.14 to M07.26 contain SC 2's decision/approval on further processing of WG 3 projects.

Suspended projects are as follows:
Revision of ISO/IEC 6429 (Resolution M07.15)
Revision of ISO/IEC 7350 (Resolution M07.22)
Project 20.11: CD 8859-11: Latin-Thai (Resolution M07.17)

Changed Projects are as follows:
Revision of ISO/IEC 1073: OCR-B (Resolution M07.14) to TR type 2
Revision of ISO/IEC 10367 (Resolution M07.25) to Technical Corrigendum

11. Review of Programme of Work

11.1 New Projects, Subdivision/Minor enhancement
The following five new subdivisions of Project 1.02.18.01 were proposed by WG 2 and accepted.

RUNIC:	Resolution M07.12
SINHALA:	Resolution M07.12
OGHAM:	Resolution M07.12
Symbols and Other collections	Resolution M07.12
Keyboard Symbols	Resolution M07.13

11.1.2 Romanian proposal for New part of 8859
The recommendation from WG 3 was accepted. Resolution M07.20 covers SC 2's decision on this subject.

11.1.3 A new part of 8859 covering the EURO symbol (Document: SC 2 N 2910)
The recommendation from WG 3 was accepted. Resolution M07.21 covers SC 2's decision on this subject.

11.1.4 A new series of 8 bit code standards containing non-spacing characters
Document: SC 2 N 2862 National Body of Canada
This item was not considered at this meeting.

11.1.5 NP for a TR on Character set Model (Document: SC 2 N 2934)
WG 3 postponed the discussion on this subject and therefore, no action was required.

11.2 Re-numbering
8859 Latin No. 8 was renumbered to Part 14 from Part 12.
Project 02.20.12 was decided to be unassigned. (Resolution M07.30)

11.3 Target dates review
SC 2 N 2936 shows the targets dates developed.

12. Report of Registration Authorities
The comments on IR 198: Latin/Hebrew (SC 2 N 2887) had been resolved during the WG 3 meeting according to WG 3 Resolution M 12.03.

13. Activity Reports from National Bodies
The following NBs submitted their NB reports:
Netherlands: N 2903
Japan: N 2923
Poland N 2925

14. Liaison Activities
14.1. Reports of Liaisons within ISO/IEC

• SC 31

Dr. Clive Hohberger, Representative from SC 31 to SC 2 presented SC 2 N2928. He noted that AIMI, international trade organization, would be willing to help out test work of OCR-B project. He also raised several questions to SC 2 as shown in Item 11 of N 2928. Resolution M07.32 was developed. NBs were invited to study N 2928 and to make contributions to SC 2 and also to nominate a liaison representative to SC 31.
• SC 22

Mr. J. van Wingen Liaison Representative between SC 22 and SC 2 presented SC 2 N 2904. He pointed out that SC 2 had not responded to the liaison statement from SC 22 (SC 2 N 2764). The Secretariat was instructed to forward a response to SC 22. (Resolution M07.33)
• ISO/TC 46/SC 2

Mr. E. Melagrakis, Secretariat of TC 46/SC2, presented N 2921 including the following issues.
Reference section 10: TC 46 is switching to 10646 as the base standard for their work. Several characters are needed in 'transliteration work' that are not in 10646. Requests for including these in 10646 may come in the future. Several diacritical marks - that do not belong in any known script - but only have semantics for 'transliteration / conversion' methods are in use in TC 46. There is anarchy in use of diacritical marks -- which are simply graphemes with no semantic meanings.

14.2.1. CEN/TC 304
Mr. Arfvidson, Chairman of CEN/TC 304, reported its activities including the following:

• The title for this TC is Character Set Technology is to change to Multilingual Infrastructure.
• EN 1922 - Telex - revision was adopted.
• prEN 1923 - European 8-bit coded character sets - will be sent for final ballot.

ENV 1973 - Two subsets of 10646 -- Minimum (Normative) and Extended (Informative)
• The ENV will be processed into an EN. We will try to amend the ENV to include characters like EURO Sign.
• Adopting 10646 as an EN - failed. If an ISO standard exists ENs are NOT necessary if the contents are identical.
• ENV 12005 - Cultural Registry - Would like to amend and move it forward to EN. There may be a parallel voting as ISO 10005 - on fast track process.
• There are about 20 work items with a business plane. These have been incorporated into EPII project 4A under the control of EDIC.
• You can look at the CEN TC 304 web pages - it is in CEN TC 304 EURO Workshop document.

14.2.5 ISOC/IETF
Mr. K. Simonsen presented SC 2 N 2914.

14.2.6 Others
TC 46/SC 4
Mr. John Clews, SC 2 Representative to TC 46/SC 4 presented N 2922. The current situation on the issue of transfer of TC 46/SC 4 projects to SC 2 were reviewed. Some recommendations were made for SC 2 to act on (see Item 7 of SC 2 N 2922). The Chairman was asked to take action with assistance from Mr. John Clews and to create some liaison documents.

Item 3 of the report mentioned that "the ad hoc meeting between SC 2/WG 2 and TC 46/SC 4 was held" and it gave an impression that an official meeting was called. Mr. Clews was asked to withdraw this item from the report. The Chairman also reminded SC 2 that when an official ad hoc meeting is required, the SC 2 Secretariat should be advised.

14.3 Discussion/Action on Liaison issues

14.3.1 Request for Establishment of Liaison
The request form UNU/IIST to establish a Category C Liaison with WG 2 was contained in N 2858. It was accepted for forwarding to JTC 1 for approval. (Resolution M07.35)

14.3.2 Request from ISOC
According to the co-operative agreement between ISOC and SC 2, ISOC requested SC 2 to make SC 2 standards, in particular, ISO/IEC 10646 electronically available and to make them on-line accessible. The acting Chairman wished to support this request and explained some of his plan. Noting that copyright of IS belongs to ISO and IEC, it was resolved to forward this request to JTC 1 for further consideration. (Resolution M07. 34)

14.3.3 Review of Liaisons
Liaisons and their representatives from SC 2 were confirmed as shown in Resolution M07.42.

15. Recommendation for JTC 1 Periodical Review
SC 2 Recommendations for 5 years Periodical review have been decided as follows:

• ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993 and Cor. 1 Revision

The scope of the revision is to incorporate all amendments and technical corrigenda approved by 1999-03-31.
• ISO/IEC 2033: 1988 (MICR and OCR) Revision
• ISO/IEC 6936: 1988 (Conversion between 646 and 6937-2) Confirmation

16.1 Future Development in SC 2
The National Body of the Netherlands presented Document SC 2 N 2881.  No action was needed.

16.2 Identification of IT-characters
The National Body of the Netherlands presented Document: SC 2 N 2714. Feedback from NBLOs were requested on this contribution.

17. SC 2 Recommendations to JTC 1

17.1 Reengineering
This item was discussed under Item 8.

17.2 Transfer of ISO/TC 46 Coded Character Sets Projects
This item was discussed under Item 14.

18. SC 2 Implementation plan for the server based document distribution
Mr. K. Simonsen and the SC 2 Secretariat prepared Document N 2920. Based on this document, it was agreed to begin distribution of SC 2 documents via server (Resolution M07.29)

19. Endorsement of Chairman
The nomination of Prof. Shibano was endorsed. The secretariat was instructed to forward this nomination to the September 1997 JTC 1 Plenary Meeting in Ottawa for appointment. (Resolution M07.01).

20. Appointment of Conveners/Rapporture and Project Editors

20.1 WG 2 Convener
Mr. Mike Ksar, US nomination, was appointed as the WG 2 Convener for an additional three-year term (Resolution M07.36)

20.2 IRG Rapporture
The term of office of Mr. Zhang Zhoucai the IRG Rapporture was to expire at this meeting. At the request of WG 2 and IRG, his term was extended till December 1997. The new nomination will be considered at the December 1997 IRG meeting to be held in Vietnam. (Resolution M07.38)

20.3 WG 3 Convener
The nominations were submitted from the National Bodies of the Netherlands (N 2876) and from Greece (N 2877). The Netherlands withdrew the nomination and therefore Mr. E. Melagrakis was appointed as the new Convener for a three-year term.

20.4 Project Editors
Project editors were (re)appointed as shown in Resolution M07.39 and M07.40.

Note: 10646-2 Project Editors
The US, with the support of the WG 2 Convener, nominated Mr. Michel Suignard (US). Denmark nominated Mr. Michael Everson (Ireland). The possibility of having co-eidtors was discussed. However, the WG 2 Convener insisted that he wants to work with only one editor considering the reporting mechanism. There was no compromise during the meeting. In order to progress the work item, project editor needed to be appointed. Therefore, SC 2 reached the decision to appoint Mr. Mike Ksar, WG 2 Convener, as the acting editor and to further discuss this issue at the next SC 2 Plenary Meeting to be held in Seattle in March 1998 including the possibilities of: -  Subdividing the project into Plane 1 and Plane 2 and considering nomination of editors for each part, - other NBs nominations.

21 Registration Authority

Three National Bodies, Greece, Japan, Denmark, had indicated their offer to take over the responsibility after the resignation of ECMA. The Chairman reported that through informal discussion, Greece agreed to withdraw the offer; Denmark has been asked to host the website for SC 2 and considering the current workload of Denmark for it, it would have too much additional burden. In light of ability of ITSCJ to administer the registrations etc., it was agreed between Japan and Denmark that the RA will be Japan. (Resolution M07.03)

22. Subsequent Meetings

Next Meeting:
At the last Quebec plenary, SC 2 scheduled to have April 97 plenary in the Netherlands. The email confirmation from the Netherlands had been received. The Japan's offer was also circulated as N 2905. WG 2 had already decided to have its meeting in Seattle in March 1998. There was a proposal to have WG 3 and Plenary meeting in the Netherlands in April and WG 2 meeting in Seattle in March. After discussion, it was agreed to have all three meetings in March 1998 in Seattle. It was also suggested to shorten the period of the meetings to reduce the burden of participants.

The following schedule was agreed.

1998-03-24/25 Seattle, USA
1999-01 Japan (Tentative)
2000-03 Egypt (Tentative)
2001-03
2002-03
(Resolution M07.43)

23. Any Other Business
There was no item.

24. Approval of Resolutions
The adopted resolutions are contained in SC 2 N 2940.

25. Closure of the Meeting
The meeting was adjourned at 3:15 p.m., July 9, 1997.