From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Apr 22 2004 - 17:51:33 EDT
From: "Rick McGowan" <rick@unicode.org>
> The Unicode® Consortium announced today that it will be hosting the Common
> Locale Data Repository project, providing key building blocks for software
> to support the world's languages.
>
> For more information and links to the project pages, please see:
>
> http://www.unicode.org/press/press_release-cldr.html
Is that a contribution of the Unicode Consortium to the OpenI18n.org project
(former li18nux.org, maintained with most help from the FSF), or a decision to
make the OpenI18n.org project be more open by pushing it to a more visible
standard?
In that case, I'm surprised to see that the preliminary pages on the
Unicode.org's CLDR project defines it as a UTS (Standard) when it is a revizion
of a previously published released 1.0 of LDML, plus the repository which is
still hosted in the IBM's ICU project repository...
Some confusion will occur for now if the CLDR pages reference a UTS (standard)
rather than a UTR, which it should still be now, until there's a final approval
as a standard (don't forget the Microsoft vote here, as it is camaigning a lot
against Linux, which was the base platform from which the Openi18n.org project
was born. Also the only certified platform for Openi18n.org is RedHat, a Linux
platform...
Will Microsoft endorse this addition into the domain of Unicode.org? I hope so,
if this can help improve interoperability of platforms in this domain. I also
hope that IBM will continue his woderful support for the CLDR collection of data
for the repository, and that Microsoft and others will contribute too to make
this important repository a key element for the convergence of platforms.
May be this collaborative and richer standard will bring to the final approval
of the unfinished ISO 3066 standard which developers and users want since so
long...
What will happen to the discussion lists on openi18n.org? Will it be easy to
contribute locale data or to submit bug reports as it was in the past? I'm sure
that the Unicode subcommitee that will take in charge the CLDR will need a new
policy to accept new members using also their own technical solutions.
At least I see a good point here if Openi18n.org merges with Unicode's goals:
Unicode has now a concrete application of its standard (for example the CLDR
will contain what has always been missing in Unicode: a clear definition of its
usage with concreate languages and locales; so Unicode will not ignore the
specific issues that come with some languages)
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