Minutes of the 11th meeting of TC304/WG2

CEN/TC304/WG2 N617
Date: 1996-09-14

Title: Minutes of the 11th meeting of TC304/WG2 (Cultural Elements)

Source: Þorvarður Kári Ólafsson
Status: Adopted Minutes
Action: For information to WG2

Thursday 1996-09-12 09:00-17:00
Place: ÖNORM, Heinestraße 38, A-1021 Wien, Österreich

1. Opening of the meeting

The interim convener, Michael Everson opened the meeting and welcomed the experts.

2. Roll call of delegates

The following experts were present:
AT Gerhard Budin
DK Keld Simonsen (from 15:00)
GB John Clews
GR Evangelos Melagrakis
IE Michael Everson
IS Þorvarður Kári Ólafsson
PL Elzbieta Broma-Wrzesieñ

3. Selection of chair, secretary and drafting committee

3.1 WG2 Convener N604
WG2 examined the nominations for new convener and resolved to promote the appointment of Michael Everson and ask the TC secretariat to initiate a vote by correspondence (RESOLUTION 1, A9609-01).

3.2 Selection of secretary and drafting committee
Þorvarður Kári Ólafsson was selected secretary of this meeting. Evangelos Melagrakis, Michael Everson and Þorvarður Kári Ólafsson were selected for the drafting of resolutions.

4. Adoption of agenda identification and allocation of papers

N609 was modified and adopted as N609R.

5. Adoption of minutes of 10th meeting of WG2

The minutes of the last meeting (N586R) were adopted. Resolutions (N587) were already adopted at the last meeting.

6. Reports on action items

AI9406-02 Michael Everson to provide fonts for all characters in EES
CLOSED for Macintosh.
OPEN for other platforms.
AI9406-17 Michael Everson to make new draft of N339
CLOSED, replaced by resolution 2.
AI9406-18 WG and MBs to comment on output of AI9406-17
CLOSED with last item.
AI9411-04 Keld Simonsen to provide a draft for P2.2
CLOSED, replaced by resolution 2.
AI9411-07 Evangelos Melagrakis to provide official confirmation on Coptic + Tsakonian
OPEN
AI9511-05 Everyone to check P11 regarding the languages in their own pervue
CLOSED
AI9511-06 Editor of P11 to check whether some data in JvW report are useful
CLOSED
AI9511-07 Everyone to determine whether the scope of P11 is OK.
CLOSED
AI9511-09 Borka Jerman-Blazic to provide contact info on Glossasoft
CLOSED, see item 7.5.
AI9511-10 Keld Simonsen to investigate what can be done about Parole
CLOSED, see item 7.5.
AI9511-11 Þorvarður Kári Ólafsson to investigate what can be done about Speechdat
CLOSED, see item 7.5.
AI9511-12 Keld Simonsen to take contact with TC37 on L/11112a
OPEN
AI9511-13 WG2 to examine all PT01 proposed ISO work with regard to Vienna agreement
OPEN
AI9604-01 Keld Simonsen to provide the JTC1 doc.number of the API NP
CLOSED, document distributed as W04.
AI9604-02 Members to review their national response to the API NP
CLOSED
AI9604-03 Keld Simonsen and Þorvarður Kári Ólafsson to draft a complete liaison document regarding WG20
CLOSED today, see N615.
AI9604-04 Secretariat to find out how copies of standards can be made available to TC
CLOSED: If a WG needs a standard for the development of another standard,
experts should contact the TC secretariat. For other standards contact your
national body.
AI9604-05 Secretariat to add more facts to ease BTS7 approval (of proposed NWIs)
CLOSED, contained in Business plan
AI9604-06 members are invited to provide justification for transposition ISO 9995.
OPEN

7. Work Items.

7.1. Project 2.1: Registration of Cultural Elements. Revision of ENV 12005.
Work item approved by BTS7 in June. Issues document CEN/TC304 N579.
Editor: Keld Simonsen.

TC304 and SC22/WG20 have agreed to support the fast-track by DS of ENV 12005 in JTC1. The exact procedure needs clarification, see discussion at joint meeting yesterday (A9609-02 on Keld Simonsen).

7.2. Project 2.2 Cultural Elements.
Draft document expected 1996-09. Issues document CEN/TC304 N448 (=WG2 minutes).
Editor: Keld Simonsen.

A draft was expected today and did not arrive.

Issues list (to become a TC304 document):

Issue 1: Format.
At least narrative, according to examples in annex D of ENV 12005. The editor is apparently too busy to convert N339 into narrative form, so Michael Everson volunteered to do so and was appointed assistant editor (RESOLUTION 2, A9609-03). CLOSED

Issue 2: Coverage.
Maximum ENV 12005 coverage, but depends on availability of data, so it will be according to the contents of N339. CLOSED

Issue 3: Introductory text.
It is definitely needed, stating for example "this is a collection of cultural elements, written according to specifications of ENV 12005". To be provided by the assistant editor, see resolution 2 (A9609-04). CLOSED

7.3. Project 11. Natural Languages.
Draft document CEN/TC304 N510. Issues document CEN/TC304 N451.
Editor: Michael Everson. Papers: N248, N614

The editor reported on the status of Project 11. The 4th draft is almost ready.

Issue: Detailed contents
Data still missing for a few languages. Elzbieta Broma-Wrzesieñ was asked to find out more about Kashubian (A9609-05). The editor was asked to provide a list of languages where data is missing (A9609-06). The editor is enquiring for more information from a wide range of experts on the WWW.

Issue: Readability
Indexing of the report was discussed and the editor will provide an alphabetical list of languages referring to the family or page (A9609-07).
Also a numbering system will be added in the final version (A9609-08).

Issue: Coverage
John Clews presented his document, N614 on the definition of Europe. He requested that the definition be based on the definitions used by certain international organisations. Gerhard Budin referred to Eurostat, which has a very precise definition of Europe. P11 uses this definition. The project is a geo-linguistic survey, not a political survey. The editor pointed out that including Kazakhstan would delay the publishing of this report, because it would mean adding at least 85 languages. The discussion resulted in a clarification being added at the end of clause 1.1, and the text "for the purposes of this report" in the middle of 1.1.

John Clews also mentioned Khakassian, which resulted in action on him to find out whether it is in Europe (A9609-09).

Issue: Basic Cyrillic.
The editor asked for guidance on the basic alphabet of Cyrillic. It was decided to have no basic cyrillic. Section 2.3 is deleted.

Issue: Annex E.
The editor asked for guidance on the formatting and ordering of the annex on 10646. In Barcelona it was decided to add this annex. John Clews proposed that the format of ISO 9 be used.

Evangelos Melagrakis opened a discussion on the limits and purpose of this report, by asking why all this information is needed. Gerhard Budin supported the decision already taken on the new annex in Barcelona. There is always some duplication of information, but the information in this annex is very useful and does not go beyond the scope of this project. This report will raise the awareness of multilingualism in Europe.

It was decided that annex E will include Glyph (capital and small), UCS-hexcode (or proposed name when missing) and language codes (or names when missing). The order will be according to ISO ordering standard. The title will be Mapping of characters to 10646.

The 4th draft will soon be made available on the WWW (A9609-10).

7.4. Project 17. European default locale.
Work item approved. Issues document CEN/TC304 N579. Editor: Keld Simonsen.

The editor distributed a first draft document W03.

Issues list (to become TC304 document):

Issue 1: Language independence.
As language independent as possible. Thus, English names should not be used for days/months and token identifiers should be blank. CLOSED

Issue 2: Numeric format.
Use ISO 8601 for numeric format. CLOSED

Issue 3: Recommended formats
Use ISO 8601 for long and short dates. CLOSED

Issue 4: Month names
Numeric, leading zero, both for full and abbreviated month names. CLOSED

Issue 5: Names of weekdays.
Use day numbers, without leading zeros, starting with Monday, both for full and abbreviated weekday names. CLOSED

Issue 6: International currency symbol and position
Symbol: Use XEU. CLOSED.
Position: Check the ISO 4217. OPEN

Issue 7: Domestic currency symbol and position
Use ECU, position same as int.cur.sym. CLOSED

Issue 8: Code for Europe
Can EU be used? check ISO 3166. OPEN

Issue 9: Deliverable
At least registration. CLOSED
Maybe also ENV. OPEN

Issue 10: Contents of clause 2 (classification)
Include narrative description of the rules, about 15 lines. Start by "This locale specifies casing, punctuation and spacing in L,C and G scripts". More text to be drafted by editor. CLOSED

Issue 11: Affirmative/negative answers
Either very few (1/0) or very many possibilities. Next draft should contain at least 1/0 and
+/-. Action on convener to provide a list of possible answers (A9609-11). OPEN

Issue 12: Posix locale
To be represented with mnemonics. CLOSED

Issue 13: Consistency
The decisions will be taken on the narrative part, the POSIX part is just an implementation of it. CLOSED

Issue 14: Time plan
The editor was instructed to provide a new draft for Email discussion, taking the issues list into account (A9609-12). Time plan to be revisited at next meeting. OPEN.

7.5. Project 19. Cooperation with language engineering projects.
Internal work item. Issues document CEN/TC304 N576. Editor: Different liaison officers.

Glossasoft
Actual documents are needed from Glossasoft. Evangelos Melagrakis will provide some (A9609-13)

Parole and Speechdat
According to Gerhar Budin, these projects are not likely to provide any proposals for standards. Thus all action on them is closed.

Maits
This project exists due to an initiative of some TC304 experts. A number of the deliverables may be suitable for pre-standardisation.

Lest
This project is being prepared by the TC304 secretariat together with several experts, most of them from TC304. The project should be discussed with Ian Urquhart at the Comission (A9609-14).

7.6. Project 21. National specifications of cultural conventions.
Internal work item. Issues document CEN/TC304 N576. Also document N339.
Editor: (National).

Þorvarður Kári Ólafsson reported on the progress of the Icelandic standard for national specification and the main problems encountered: lack of Eurolocale, different opinions on the date format.

7.7. Project 22. European Keyboards - guidelines and overview.
Proposed NWI. Issues document CEN/TC304 N576. Editor: Michael Everson

The justification for this work is: Since the engraved character repertoire of keyboards vary among countries, as does the need to access foreign characters, there is a European need for national application guidelines on ISO/IEC 9995 and ISO 14755.

This WI is not yet adopted by BTS7, but the CR deliverable should be: Overview of the mess and guidelines on how it can be solved. For example IBM offers 6 different keyboards for Greek. This might then convince the Commission to ask us to make European standards on keyboards.

8. Liaison reports

Here only liaison reports of specific importance to the projects of WG2 were addressed, as more general liaison reports will be given at the TC304 plenary.

8.1 ISO TC37 and Infoterm
Gerhard Budin reported on the language codes. Infoterm will send the TC304 proposal for new language codes to the advisory committee of 639-registration. After its decision, the changes will be published in a new issue of 639 newsletter.

8.2 SC22/WG20 Internationalisation
The cooperation was discussed extensively at a joint meeting yesterday. Based on that discussion, Þorvarður Kári Olafsson tabled a revised plan for cooperation, which was adopted by RESOLUTION 3. The plan (N615) is to be forwarded to WG20 (A9609-15).

9. Any other business

None.

10. Next meeting

A whole day is needed during the TC304-week in London, January 1997.

11. Adoption of resolutions, action items, and issues list

3 resolutions were adopted unanimously, see document N616.

Issues lists are to be compiled by editors from these minutes (A9609-16).

Old action items:
AI9406-02 Michael Everson to provide fonts for all characters in EES (CLOSED for Mac)
AI9411-07 Evangelos Melagrakis to provide official confirmation on Coptic + Tsakonian
AI9511-12 Keld Simonsen to take contact with TC37 on L/11112a
AI9511-13 WG2 to examine all PT01 proposed ISO work with regard to Vienna agreement
AI9604-06 members are invited to provide justification for transposition ISO 9995.

New action items:
A9609-01 TC secretariat: Initiate a vote by correspondence on new WG2 convener.
A9609-02 Keld Simonsen: The exact procedure needs clarification.
A9609-03 Michael Everson: Convert N339 into narrative form.
A9609-04 Michael Everson: Provide introductory text for P2.2.
A9609-05 Elzbieta Broma-Wrzesieñ: Find out more about Kashubian.
A9609-06 Michael Everson: Provide a list of languages where data is missing.
A9609-07 Michael Everson: Provide an alphabetical list of languages in P11, referring to the family or page.
A9609-08 Michael Everson: Add a numbering system in the final version of P11.
A9609-09 John Clews: Find out whether Khakassian is in Europe.
A9609-10 Michael Everson: Make the 4th draft of P11 soon available on the WWW.
A9609-11 Michael Everson: Provide a list of possible affirmative/negative answers.
A9609-12 Keld Simonsen: Provide a new draft P17 for Email discussion.
A960-13 Evangelos Melagrakis: Provide actual documents from Glossasoft.
A9609-14 Þorvarður Kári Ólafsson: Discuss LEST with Ian Urquhart at the Comission.
A9609-15 Þorvarður Kári Ólafsson: Forward N615 to WG20.
A9609-16 All editors: Compile issues lists from these minutes.

12. Closing of meeting

Closed at 17:00.

Back to the WG2 Home Page

HTML Michael Everson, [email protected], Baile Átha Cliath, 1997-09-16