From: Frank Farance [frank@farance.com] Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 2:58 PM To: Kenneth Whistler; keld@dkuug.dk Cc: kenw@sybase.com; tplum@plumhall.com; jb@benito.com; Winkler, Arnold F; nwallace@us.ibm.com; frank@farance.com; John.Hill@eng.sun.com; rex@RexJaeschke.com; nobuyoshi.mori@sap.com; Don.Schricker@microfocus.com; willemw@ace.nl; convener@research.att.com; asmusf@ix.netcom.com Subject: Re: Agenda for Character set ad-hoc - 26th August At 11:19 2002-08-08 -0700, Kenneth Whistler wrote: > ... > > It is also unfortunate that Unicode > > wants to build parallel standards in this field, when ISO already has > > done the work here. > > In this particular case, ISO has not done the work. Annex A is > playing belated catchup with the Unicode Consortium recommendations > for identifiers, which are based on a consistent analysis of > character properties -- extensible for new additions. > > Recommendations for programming languages (and markup languages, > such as XML) should be based on that Unicode analysis -- and then > should make principled decisions regarding whether identifier syntax > should be permanently pegged at some particular release version > of Unicode (e.g. Unicode 3.0), should accept new repertoire as it > is added in future versions, or should simply take the position > that all characters are allowed except for a deliberate exception > list (also tied to a particular release version of Unicode). > There are tradeoffs in identifier and maintenance stability, as well > as interoperability considerations, but burying one's head in the > sand about the importance of the Unicode Consortium specifications > doesn't particularly help in coming to consensus agreements about > identifier stability for formal language specifications. Ken- My concern is that SC22 have a voice in these "identifier characters". I want to make sure that the people choosing the identifier characters have an understanding and involvement in programming language standards. WG20 seems to be the place where this happens. Sure it is possible to have some Unicode people in individual SC22 WGs, but I'd rather see a consistent SC22 perspective on this, i.e., representation of SC22's issues (not necessarily Unicode's table). I don't believe that Unicode will be able to address the programming language standardization aspect of these characters (similar to the concerns of XML, ASN.1, SQL, etc..). It seems fine to me for Unicode to submit a contribution and for SC22 to have some review (SC32 would like review, too), but to merely point to a Unicode table without SC22's review does not serve the purpose of SC22's programming languages. Regarding the maintainability of this, there's always the possibility of using a registry (a tried and true method) that would satisfy many concerns. Do you still have objections to use of a registry? -FF _______________________________________________________________________ Frank Farance, Farance Inc. T: +1 212 486 4700 F: +1 212 759 1605 mailto:frank@farance.com http://farance.com Standards, products, services for the Global Information Infrastructure