ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 RIN: POSIX Rapporteur Group on Internationalization Resolutions from Stockholm meeting JTC1/SC22/WG15RIN-N052 JTC1/SC22/WG15-N215 (second part) Note: These resolutions adopt a serial numbering scheme. For reference, resolutions from previous meetings may be considered to be renumbered as follows: Location Old nos. New nos. Copenhagen 1-15 1-15 Paris 1-24 16-39 London 1-9 40-48 Rotterdam A-B, W-Z 49-54 55. Forwarding of questionnaire to WG20 Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN has developed a draft internationalization questionnaire, which when completed by national bodies or other representative standards development organizations fully familiar with the IT requirements of a particular culture can assist in determining general internationalization interface and application portability requirements, and Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 has embarked on the development of standards in the area of internationalization, Therefore, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN requests that ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 authorize and instruct its liaison to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 to transmit to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 the then current version of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN's draft internationalization questionnaire (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 N217) for review and comment by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 and for their consideration in relation to their scope of work. 56. Informal liaison to PortSoft Whereas various members of the Japanese national delegation to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN attend meetings of and participate in the activities of PortSoft, Therefore ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN requests that the Japanese national delegation to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN act as an informal liaison between PortSoft and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN. 57. Collection of locales Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN has determined that it is beneficial to the IT community for national profiles, locales and corresponding charmaps to be collected and made available in electronic form to persons within the IT community and national bodies as samples of such documents, Therefore, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN requests that Keld Simonsen collect national profiles, locales and corresponding charmaps and make same available in electronic form to interested persons or national bodies on an on-going basis, subject to the availability of necessary computer and network resources. 58. Request to WG20: possible new internationalization-related projects Whereas, the Japanese rapporteur to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN, has submitted a draft Guideline for Producing a national POSIX Locale (JTC1/SC22/WG15RIN N045) and various sample national profiles have also been submitted, including the Danish and Japanese national profile (JCT1/SC22/WG15RIN N012, N046), to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN for review and comment and consideration in connection with other ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN work, and Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN has determined that publication of said national locales as a Technical Report, and the publication of the Japanese National Profile, the Danish National Profile, together with other national profiles which might be available, as a separate Technical Report would be desirable for the purpose of providing sample national profiles and locales which could act as guidance to other national bodies in the development of their national profiles and locales, or other organizations developing locale definitions, and Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN has determined, in concert with the UniForum and X/Open internationalization working groups, that in order for locales to interoperate properly, particularly in a networked or distributed computing environment, a locale registry procedure would be desirable to assure that a precise definition of a locale that would be known network wide, Therefore, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN requests that ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15, through its liaison to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20, request the following determinations from ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20: 1) Does ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 wish to sponsor an NP for the new work item of the publication of national POSIX locales, including the Japanese national locale and other national locales then available, as a Technical Report, or does ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 prefer that such work be sponsored by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15? 2) Does ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 wish to sponsor an NP for the new work item of the publication of a collection of National Profiles, including the Japanese National Profile, and other national profiles then available, as a Technical Report, or does ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 prefer that such work be sponsored by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15? 3) Does ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 wish to investigate the development of an international locale registry that would satisfy the requirements of national bodies and users, and sponsor any new work item that may result from such investigations, or does ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 prefer that such work be done by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15? 59. Input to WG20: internalization background paper Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN has developed a technical paper which provides an overview of the technical issues of internationalization, as related to the work of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15, and, Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 may find an already existing technical paper which provides an overview of certain of the technical issues involved in internationalization to be useful in their work, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN requests that ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 forward the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN background paper on internationalization to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20, through the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 liaison to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20, for their consideration. 60. Input to SC1: definition of byte Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN has determined that inconsistencies exist between various ISO standards as to the definition of the word byte, and that such inconsistencies may adversely affect the functionality and portability of applications within the POSIX environment, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN requests that ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 forward the following liaison statement to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC1: The following is a suggestion for the definition of byte, as a refinement of the definition appearing in ISO DIS 2382-1 (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC1 N1176) together with the one appearing in CD 9945-2.2. We have examined several ISO standards and found inconsistencies with the use of the word, and recommend the following definition which appears to capture all the critical characteristics and is still not too narrow. byte: An individually addressable unit of data storage consisting of a string of a number of bits. It may be used to store a character or a portion of a character; The number of bits within a byte may vary between system implementations. The least significant bit is called the low-order bit; the most significant is called the high-order bit. The definition of byte in the new Part 1 (01.02.09) is generally consistent with this definition but equates byte with character exactly. However, equating bytes and characters disallows the concept of multibyte character that appears in ISO 2022. Some definitions of byte have, in the past, equated it with octet (exactly 8 bits). This does not work on some architectures, as the natural size of a byte may be other than 8 bits and this is acknowledged in newer definition. (For consistency with 9989, 9945-2.2 also sets a minimum size of a byte as 8.) 61. Input to SC2: concern at direction of DIS 10646 Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN has noted significant difficulties involving ISO/IEC 10646, as mentioned in the exchange of liaison statements between ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 mentioned below, Therefore ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15/RIN requests that ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 resolve as follows: Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22, pursuant to its resolution AY of its September 1991 meeting (Vienna), forwarded a liaison statement to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 indicating concerns regarding changes to the then current DIS ISO/IEC 10646, and Whereas ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 forwarded a response to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 document N 2301 (October 1991), Therefore WG15 notes that most existing implementations and applications of 9945 (POSIX) will not support the canonical form of ISO 10646 as a coded character set without fundamental modifications. We also expect this to be true of the ISO/IEC 9899 C standard. (The programming language in which most existing POSIX systems are implemented.) Adoption of 10646 with full interoperability between new applications and existing applications will be impossible without, at a minimum, recompilation after at least some modification. Although this modification is expected to be small at the source level, it will result in significantly different object code. Additionally, an assumption on the part of an operating system that 10646 is in use is likely to render existing binary applications unusable. Since users (and consequently vendors) are seriously concerned with the issue of backwards compatibility of both source and binary applications, introduction of 10646 in a form which affects both C and 9945 applications will significantly reduce the likelihood of adoption of 10646 on systems which use either one or both of C and 9945. It is to be noted that insisting that zero octets can be used as part of a coded character in 10646 may simplify some problems, but it appears to be a significant problem for other communities. Further evaluation of the relative costs to the industry and its installed base of users is necessary to evaluate this properly. All national bodies are asked to take this into account, and to determine the relative cost of such decisions as part of that process. 62. Thanks The JTC1/SC22/WG15 Rapporteur Group on Internationalization thanks Ann Flod and other members of the staff at SIS for making the meeting arrangements. The JTC1/SC22/WG15 Rapporteur Group on Internationalization thanks Mr. Keld Simonsen for chairing the meeting. The JTC1/SC22/WG15 Rapporteur Group on Internationalization thanks Mr. Dominic Dunlop for acting as secretary for the meeting. The JTC1/SC22/WG15 Rapporteur Group on Internationalization Mr. Ralph Barker, and Mr. Yasushi Nakahara for participating on the Drafting Committee.