Some European matters arising at the WG2 meeting in Beijing
Michael Everson 
March 23, 2000 

Dear colleagues,

This informal report will indicate some matters of European interest which
were discussed during the JTC1/SC2/WG2 meetings in Beijing this week.
Representing European NBs in Beijing were Michael Everson (Ireland) and
Chris Fynn (UK).

1. The request from Canada supported by Finland on the CD ballot on ISO/IEC
10646-2 to split Vertical Extension B and put some of the characters into
the BMP did not find favour with the IRG, and was not accepted.

2. The proposal in N2175 to restrict the encoding space of the UCS by
removing the provision for Private Use Groups and Planes beyond Plane 16
was accepted.

3. Eight Kildin Sįmi Cyrillic characters proposed by Norway, Finland, and
Ireland in WG2 2173 were accepted for future processing as an amendment.

4. The GERMAN PENNY SIGN was accepted for inclusion in the Currency block.
The German Mark sign is already encoded in the Letterlike Symbols block
(U+2133).

5. WG2 has accepted the request from Finland and Ireland in WG2 N2211 to
assign collection identifiers for the MES-1, the MES-2, the MES-3A, and the
MES-3B which have been published in CWA 13873:2000.

6. A proposal from Armenia in N2190 to amend ISO/IEC 10646 by replacing the
Armenian table of characters with a new table was rejected. WG2 reaffirmed
the principles that character code positions and character names shall not
be changed.

7. Discussion of the document N2189 by Erkki Kolehmainen, Marc
Küster,Vladas Tumasonis, and Žorgeir Siguršsson was inconclusive. Concern
was expressed that because WG2 is a character coding committee, not a
committee which registered letters belonging to languages, maintenance of
the kind of annex proposed would be problematic at best, and impossible at
worst because of the thousands and thousands of potentially precomposed
characters. It was noted that Erkki Kolehmainen had abstained from voting
on the Alpha CWA because of his concern that such an endeavour was not
suited to a standards body, and suggested that a private, web-based
registry such as that provided by Alpha would indeed be more appropriate.
Such a registry would be adaptable even if informal. The issue can be
further considered by National Bodies and discussed at Meeting 39 in Athens.

8. The disposition of comments on the CD for 10646-2 will be available on
the WG2 web site as N2217. The resolutions will be found as N2204.

Best regards,

Michael Everson