From: Asmus Freytag [asmusf@ix.netcom.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 4:04 PM
To: lisam@us.ibm.com; unicore@unicode.org
Cc: x3l2@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu
Subject: Re: UTC Agenda: Handling PDAM issues

Lisa,

Please snip out the document below, give it a UTC document header
and number, and put that doc number on the UTC agenda
item (B.1.2?) for this item.

A./
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Handling PDAM issues

This document presents background on the WG2 process of
handling amendments and recommends an overall approach to
ballot comments. It supplements Ken's Consent Docket, which
makes detailed recommendations on repertoire issues.

There are three amendments in progress in WG2, and they are at
very different stages of the process.

AMD1 to ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000

         this is going out as FDAM. Only minor editorial matters
         can be tweaked, if at all, at this stage. Character names
         and allocations are frozen. There were some repertoire
         additions/deletions in Singapore - UTC has little choice
         but to adopt these unless we want our standards to no
         longer be synchronized.

         See Ken's consent docket.


AMD1 to ISO/IEC 10646-2:2001
AMD2 to ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000

         these are going out as PDAM ballots. PDAM ballots are due
         sometime before the Dublin WG2 meeting in May. A PDAM is
         the first draft stage of an amendment. NB votes can add
         or remove characters without restriction during this stage.
         UTC is should evaluate the draft and suggest additions or
         deletions as the case may be.

         Further, formal comments are not due until the time of
         our Feb UTC meeting - and while we have the resolutions,
         we don't have the formal text of the ballot available
         at this meeting.

         Ken suggests that we formally adopt the Tai Le, Tamil and
         Phonetic character additions at this time, since they are
         non-controversial. This is a good idea - they don't require
         comment and adopting them at this stage gets them off our 
backs.

         However, for the other additions that need review, and would
         likely lead to specific comments on the PDAM draft I would
         like to suggest that we reserve a formal UTC decision until
         the next meeting so that we have the actul PDAM document text
         and can deal with all the comments on the drafts at the same
         time. In the past it has been difficult to keep track of comments
         generated over multiple meetings.

There are other, non-repertoire issues, and therefore not noted in
Kens' 'consent docket' for which we already know that we'll want to
generate comments. It might make sense to take a few moments during
this meeting to take stock of these issues, and assign people to
prepare draft positions for the next meeting to streamline the
process of generating comments.

In addition to the Korean and Japanese requests for symbol
additions issues requiring some preparation include the questions
of collections for "Multilingual European Subsets" (MESs) and
revisiting the ways the Unicode Character Database and Unicode
Standard are referenced in 10646. Further, we need to consider
whether we have any other pending additions that we want WG2
to consider in Dublin. Finally. there may be other issues that
I am not aware of as I am writing this.

Looking forward

After resolution of Ballot comments in Dublin, the PDAMs would be sent
out for FPDAM ballots next. During that stage of balloting, technical
changes are still OK, but WG2 is more conservative in what to accept,
since the final round of balloting is a simple up or down vote on the
whole package. FPDAM ballots would be reviewed during the December 2002
meeting of WG2.

WG2 has begun to use the amendments to also make editorial and
technical corrigenda. Thus we need to occasionally review the text
of 10646 as well as the current amendments. If there are technical
corrigenda (=changes other than repertoire or names, of course)
that are not minor, simple or straightforward, they need to enter
the process in Dublin, lest they be too controversial for last
minute inclusion as part of the FPDAM ballot.

WG2 plans to have fewer meetings per year in the future, meaning
that the time between amendments will increase. This has an impact
on urgent repertoire additions, but also on our ability to make
quick adjustments on technical issues (corrigenda). It therefore
becomes more imperative that we don't miss the next available
opportunity on WG2's calendar once we have identified an urgent
issue.

A./