SC22/WG15 N467 Date: Mon, 9 May 94 10:21:11 +1200 From: Keith Hopper Subject: SNZ Member body action items. To: sc22wg15@dkuug.dk Cc: anz_sc22@comu2.auckland.ac.nz, r.hicks@auckland.ac.nz Standards New Zealand comment on Action Items from Oct 93 Meeting ----------------------------------------------------------------- Item 14 -- We recommend deleting/closing this and maintaining only as a historical record. Item 24 -- Having hosted a meeting in 1992, New Zealand does not feel able to consider hosting another until after 1996. Item 26 --- Despite the considerable interest in internationalisation in NZ, we have been so far unable to get the appropriate authorities (which are unfortunately NOT part of the standards 'empire') to go beyond agreeing that something is needed -- at some unspecified time in the future -- when agreement is reached. This reaction is disappointing, but as an interim we would like to advise WG15 that there will need to be an NZ/English profile, an NZ/Maaori profile and possibly others for the Samoan, Croat, Tongan and Fijian communities in various parts of the country. One of the principal problems is that, being a multi-lingual society, there is need for a common character set for all of the cultural variations. The difficulty is that the Pan-Pacific Forum is still considering minor points of orthography in consultation with the Maaori Language commission. Some of the problems have been in discussion for over five years already and the possibility of using the Maaori orthography in Information Technology has raised a major difficulty, since the character APOSTROPHE (character 039 on Table 1 Row 00 of 10646-1) is a letter in the current proposals. This raises further difficulties in respect of other S Pacific languages for which it is not a letter, but a glottal marker. Until these problems of characters are resolved and it becomes possible to devise a common charmap for use in NZ then we are unlikely to be able to develop full profiles. Item 27 -- having just read the Netherlands comment on the relationship between PDTR 14252 and TR10000, we find considerable common ground for agreement. We have always had reservations about the need for "POSIX to go it alone" as it were and were perplexed when TR10000 came out and seemed to indicate that this might be unnecessary. Where we have some cause to disagree with the Netherlands remarks is in the need for the wider community to see what kinds of bindings and application interfaces to POSIX both from programs and from other bindings are needed. We found the early draft was very convincing of the need for several other standards groups to provide more effort in some (to us) surprising areas. In other words, while agreeing with the general relationship as expressed by the Netherlands, we view the need for the POSIX specific concerns to be expressed and publicised in this way as quite important. Item 37 -- An opportunity has not yet arisen within NZ to discuss the ability to offer participants in the interpretation work. Such an opportunity will arise within the next two weeks, however, and a report will be made as a result of these discussions later. Item 40 -- The draft of 2003.2 seen seems fine as it is.