Tibetan coding:
I echo the concerns raised by Michael Everson on Tibetan.
If Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 are to be code-point compatible, the body of
Unicode 2.0 should not have any tables that are not yet agreed by
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2.
However, it is obviously important that as many potential users as possible
get to know of proposals that could still be of interest to them.
There are two ways that this can easily be done by the Unicode Consortium:
(a) publish it as a separate document available separately, or
(b) as the Unicode Consortium did in April 1990 with the Version 1.0 preprint
(ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N 609) to publish it as, or as part of, an
informative annex at the rear of the document, with the actual
hex and decimal mumbers not indicated for G, P, R or C octets.
In each case the top of the page should prominently state that at time of
publication this table does NOT form part of either the Unicode or ISO/IEC
10646 standards.
* * * * * * * *
> At 19:09 1996-03-11, Mark Davis wrote:
>
The Unicode Standard 2.0 does contain sections that are not to final
amendment stage yet in 10646, such as Tibetan. The status of this material in
10646 will be clearly marked.
Michael Everson had replied:
> I appreciate the eagerness with which the Unicode Consortium would like to
> publish the new version of its standard (and I am looking forward to buying
> and using it!) but as a member of SC2/WG2, especially as one who has been
> working hard on Tibetan, I am ... disturbed by the announcement that an
> unapproved pDAM might be published in such a prestigious and important
> publication, and that implementations therefore might be based on a code
> table which may very well be changed, even in very minor ways, following
> the normal disposition of comments on an ISO formal vote. Many countries
> (China, UK, Ireland, US, Japan, Canada) made major and minor comments in
> their formal votes, and none of those comments were trivial.
>
> One worries about things like this. There was enormously unwarranted
> pressure to get Tibetan agreed and encoded, and not, in my view, to the
> good. More haste less speed. It would be nice to know what the publication
> schedule for Unicode 2.0 is; if Tibetan is amended by WG2 in April in
> Copenhagen, will those amendments be able to be published in 2.0 or not?
-- John Clews (Chair ISO/TC46/SC2 & BSI/IDT/2/5: Conversion of Written Languages) SESAME Computer Projects, 8 Avenue Road tel: +44 (0) 1423 888 432 Harrogate, HG2 7PG, United Kingdom email: john@sesame.demon.co.uk
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