L2/04-033

Source: Mark Davis
Date: Fri, 2003 Nov 21 15:55
Subject: Unicode 4.0.1 Delay

The UTC asked for Unicode 4.0.1 to be released before the February meeting, on
the basis of the technical decisions made during the November UTC meeting.
However, a number of issues have come up that make that inadvisable. In
particular:

1. There were two votes at the last meeting that required special majorities,
where that wasn't realized at the time. This is at issue because members may
have changed their votes or taken other actions had they known that the measures
needed a super majority.

2. There are some number of BIDI issues raised in connection with the new
conformance clauses, and in dealing with constructs such as URLs and email
addresses that must be resolved before the release. In particular, these issues
are very important for maintaining interoperability of BIDI text (in languages
such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Urdu) across platforms and on the web and net.

3. A conflict was discovered between the use of ZWJ and ZWNJ in Khmer syllables
and the definitions of combining character sequences (including the the
application of combining characters to base characters).

While these items could be resolved by letter ballot, the letter ballot
procedure does not allow for the kind of open discussion and debate that will
lead the committee to the best solutions. The issues in #2 and #3 are not
simple, so it is important that everyone have sufficient time and opportunity to
consider them in depth, rather than taking simple up/down actions on a letter
ballot.

In view of the fact that no member evidenced an immediate need for 4.0.1 to be
released before February (e.g. due to impending ship dates), the officers are
delaying the release until after the February UTC meeting.

As a part of this:

- The deadlines for public review for items relevant to Unicode 4.0.1 will be
extended so that they terminate a week before the February UTC meeting. In
addition, the officers may add other public review items where that could be
helpful to the resolution of issues that will be before the UTC. In particular,
we plan to add one discussing the options for handling #3 above, and an
additional document in the description of PRI #24
(http://www.unicode.org/review/) discussing options for dealing with the bidi
issues.

- New beta UCD files rolling in the decisions of the UTC at the last meeting
will be made available.

Mark
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