At the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 Plenary, finally, recommendation for a concurrent
New Work Item proposal (NP) and CD Registration of "Latin 0" will be sent
to the JTC1 Plenary to be held in Ottawa, Canada, in September. 12
countries approved this, 3 countries voted against and 2 countries
abstained. For an NP to be approved, technically, half of the voting
members have to vote positively and 5 countries at least have to agree to
participate actively (both conditions are already met in practice, the
proposal was initially a 5-country joint proposal from France, Canada,
Finland, Ireland and Denmark and on the question related to participation,
Israel joined the band wagon).
Following the JTC1 rubber-stamping the new project will officially exist
and this will immediately be followed by FCD (final Committee Draft,
already produced before the end of the SC2 Plenary) Ballot, the results of
which will be expected for next April.
This should then be followed by a DIS (Draft International Standard) Ballot
so that before the 1st of January of 1999 (on time for the EURO
implementation), we will hopefully have a duely adopted International
Standard for this new part of ISO/IEC 8859 intended to gradually and
smoothly replace Latin 1 really with minimal application disruption.
This will help passage to the Universal Character Set (UNICODE), in the
next decades by allowing correct information interchange in Europe (and
Canada and many French-speaking countries at the same time, without
excluding Latin America and the USA, if the latter switch to 8-bit clean
technology massively) between all platforms.
If the project is approved, I have been recommended to JTC1 by the SC2
Plenary for nomination as project editor. The project will be developed in
English and French.
Alain LaBonté
Iraklion
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