Re: The Unicode Standard and ISO

A few facts.

> ... Consortium refused till now to synchronize UCA and ISO/IEC 14651.

ISO/IEC 14651 and Unicode have longstanding cooperation. Ken Whistler could
speak to the synchronization level in more detail, but the above statement
is inaccurate.

> ... For another part it [sync with ISO/IEC 15897] failed because the
Consortium refused to cooperate, despite of
repeated proposals for a merger of both instances.

I recall no serious proposals for that.

(And in any event — very unlike the synchrony with 10646 and 14651 — ISO 15897
brought no value to the table. Certainly nothing to outweigh the
considerable costs of maintaining synchrony. Completely inadequate
structure for modern system requirement, no particular industry support,
and scant content: see Wikipedia for "The registry has not been updated
since December 2001".)

Mark

Mark

On Thu, Jun 7, 2018 at 1:25 PM, Marcel Schneider via Unicode <
unicode_at_unicode.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 17 May 2018 09:43:28 -0700, Asmus Freytag via Unicode wrote:
> >
> > On 5/17/2018 8:08 AM, Martinho Fernandes via Unicode wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > There are several mentions of synchronization with related standards in
> > > unicode.org, e.g. in https://www.unicode.org/versions/index.html, and
> > > https://www.unicode.org/faq/unicode_iso.html. However, all such
> mentions
> > > never mention anything other than ISO 10646.
> >
> > Because that is the standard for which there is an explicit
> understanding by all involved
> > relating to synchronization. There have been occasionally some
> challenging differences
> > in the process and procedures, but generally the synchronization is
> being maintained,
> > something that's helped by the fact that so many people are active in
> both arenas.
>
> Perhaps the cause-effect relationship is somewhat unclear. I think that
> many people being
> active in both arenas is helped by the fact that there is a strong will to
> maintain synching.
>
> If there were similar policies notably for ISO/IEC 14651 (collation) and
> ISO/IEC 15897
> (locale data), ISO/IEC 10646 would be far from standing alone in the field
> of
> Unicode-ISO/IEC cooperation.
>
> >
> > There are really no other standards where the same is true to the same
> extent.
> > >
> > > I was wondering which ISO standards other than ISO 10646 specify the
> > > same things as the Unicode Standard, and of those, which ones are
> > > actively kept in sync. This would be of importance for standardization
> > > of Unicode facilities in the C++ language (ISO 14882), as reference to
> > > ISO standards is generally preferred in ISO standards.
> > >
> > One of the areas the Unicode Standard differs from ISO 10646 is that its
> conception
> > of a character's identity implicitly contains that character's
> properties - and those are
> > standardized as well and alongside of just name and serial number.
>
> This is probably why, to date, ISO/IEC 10646 features character properties
> by including
> normative references to the Unicode Standard, Standard Annexes, and the
> UCD.
> Bidi-mirroring e.g. is part of ISO/IEC 10646 that specifies in clause 15.1:
>
> “[…] The list of these characters is determined by having the
> ‘Bidi_Mirrored’ property
> set to ‘Y’ in the Unicode Standard. These values shall be determined
> according to
> the Unicode Standard Bidi Mirrored property (see Clause 2).”
>
> >
> > Many of these properties have associated with them algorithms, e.g. the
> bidi algorithm,
> > that are an essential element of data interchange: if you don't know
> which order in
> > the backing store is expected by the recipient to produce a certain
> display order, you
> > cannot correctly prepare your data.
> >
> > There is one area where standardization in ISO relates to work in
> Unicode that I can
> > think of, and that is sorting.
>
> Yet UCA conforms to ISO/IEC 14651 (where UCA is cited as entry #28 in the
> bibliography).
> The reverse relationship is irrelevant and would be unfair, given that the
> Consortium
> refused till now to synchronize UCA and ISO/IEC 14651.
>
> Here is a need for action.
>
> > However, sorting, beyond the underlying framework,
> > ultimately relates to languages, and language-specific data is now
> housed in CLDR.
> >
> > Early attempts by ISO to standardize a similar framework for locale data
> failed, in
> > part because the framework alone isn't the interesting challenge for a
> repository,
> > instead it is the collection, vetting and management of the data.
>
> For another part it failed because the Consortium refused to cooperate,
> despite of
> repeated proposals for a merger of both instances.
>
> >
> > The reality is that the ISO model and its organizational structures are
> not well suited
> > to the needs of many important area where some form of standardization
> is needed.
> > That's why we have organization like IETF, W3C, Unicode etc..
> >
> > Duplicating all or even part of their effort inside ISO really serves
> nobody's purpose.
>
> An undesirable side-effect of not merging Unicode with ISO/IEC 15897
> (locale data) is
> to divert many competent contributors from monitoring CLDR data,
> especially for French.
>
> Here too is a huge need for action.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Marcel
>
>
Received on Thu Jun 07 2018 - 08:21:06 CDT