L2/04-429

From: "Jony Rosenne"
Date: 2004-12-27 12:48:20 -0800
To: "Rick McGowan"
Subject: ISO Vote

Rick,

I suggest the attached be added to the L2/UTC document register.

Jony

-----Original Message-----
From: SI2109 - SII Hebrew Issues in IT Systems [mailto:SI2109@isoc.org.il]
On Behalf Of sf@BEZEQ.COM
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 1:57 PM
To: SI2109@odyssey.ISOC.ORG.IL
Subject: Re: [sc2doc 279] Announcement of Document Availability (02i198)


Dear Ms Kimura,

On behalf of the Standards Institution of Israel, I attach the comment/vote
on SC2 N3760:


>
> The SII has studied the proposals currently discussed to add various
> new characters to the Hebrew script, and has the following comments:
>
> 1) The current issues and others which may be foreseen today should be
> consolidated in one comprehensive and coherent proposal.  Change is
> always disruptive and the number of times such disruption is imposed
> on users should be minimized.
>
> 2) Hebrew is an ancient and stable script, and a vast amount of Hebrew
> data exist, which conforms to standard ISO/IEC 10646 as published
> until now. Any change to the standard relative to the Hebrew script
> must not invalidate this mass of existing data.  In other words,
> existing data must remain conformant and software implementing the
> updated standard must be able to give the same results as before when
> applied to the existing data.
>
> 3) Most, if not all, current proposals concerning the Hebrew script
> are meant to answer the needs of scholars of Biblical Hebrew and other
> ancient texts.  Without denying the validity of such needs, SII is
> mainly concerned with the needs of users of modern Hebrew, which are
> satisfied by the current version of the standard.  Users of modern
> Hebrew constitute undoubtedly a much larger population than the
> scholars interested in ancient Hebrew text, and as an average probably
> a less sophisticated one. Whatever additions are made to the
> Hebrew script must not entail any change in the working
> habits of users of modern Hebrew or require from them
> linguistic abilities higher than as of today.
>
> 4) All interested parties must be given the opportunity to express
> their views and to suggest whatever addenda they see fit.  The
> intention is to solve all current and foreseeable issues, so as to
> ensure the long term stability which is so essential for any standard.
>
> 5) SII is very interested in this subject and volunteers to host a
> meeting of WG2 in which all current issues concerning the Hebrew
> script could be discussed, and hopefully resolved.
>
> Therefore, we cannot accept the Hebrew related proposals and
> request that they be deleted from the present draft.
>



Best regards,


Stefan Fuchs
SII/TC2109 Chair