ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 N

3417/WG2 N2179
Date: 2000-03-07

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2
CODED CHARACTER SETS
SECRETARIAT: JAPAN (JISC)

DOC TYPE:

National Body Contribution

TITLE:

Irish Comments on SC 2 NSC 2 N 3393, ISO/IEC CD 10646-2, Information
Technology -- Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) -- Part 2:
Secondary Multilingual Plane for scripts and symbols
Supplementary Plane for CJK Ideographs
Special Purpose Plane

SOURCE:

National Body of Ireland

PROJECT:

JTC 1.02.18.02

STATUS:This document is forwarded to WG 2 for consideration.

ACTION ID:

ACTDUE DATE:DISTRIBUTION: P, O and L Members of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2
WG Conveners and Secretariats
Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1ISO/IEC ITTF
NO. OF PAGES:

2ACCESS LEVEL: Defined
WEB ISSUE #:090

Contact: Secretariat ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 - Toshiko KIMURAIPSJ/ITSCJ (Information Processing Society of Japan/Information Technology Standards Commission of Japan)*Room 308-3, Kikai-Shinko-Kaikan Bldg., 3-5-8, Shiba-Koen, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-0011 JAPAN
Tel: +81 3 3431 2808; Fax: +81 3 3431 6493; E-mail: kimura@itscj.ipsj.or.jp*A Standard Organization accredited by JISCIrish comments on the first CD for ISO/IEC 10646-2
Reference: SC2 N3393
Closes: 2000-02-29
Date: 2000-02-29
Ireland disapproves the draft with the technical comments given below. We believe that a second CD is probably
warranted.
1. In general, we would prefer to see a greater number of scripts encoded in Plane 1 before publication of this partof ISO/IEC 10646. A number of these which seem ready for standardization are: Aegean Numbers, Linear B,Shavian, Cirth, tlhIngan Hol, Old Permic, Old Persian Cuneiform, Ugaritic Cuneiform. We request that WG2 andUTC experts consider the proposals for these scripts as to their maturity for encoding.
2. Since the font for Etruscan has been given with left-to-right directionality, the character ETRUSCAN LETTER ERS at
1031B must be reversed. We would like to see a note in the standard indicating that the Etruscan script may also
be used to represent other Old Italic scripts like Oscan, Umbrian, and Faliscan. We consider that the script could infact also represent North Picene, South Picene, Middle Adriatic, and Messapic, though it needs to be seen whether
these contain any letters additional to this repertoire. It is our view that the Northern Italic scripts (Venetic, Rhaetic,Lepontic, and Gallic) are not unifiable with the Old Italic scripts; they stand in an intermediate position between Old
Italic and Runic.
3. We would like to see a more Codex-Argenteus-like font used for Gothic. Considering the Unicode combiningcharacter/precomposed character normalization, the character GOTHIC LETTER I WITH DIAERESIS at 1033A should be
removed from the proposal and the characters following it shifted up one position.
4. We consider the Byzantine Musical Symbols to be inadequately specified. Many (or most) of the characters are
combining characters, with various positional properties, and no dotted circles have been given in the font toindicate the use of these characters. This must be corrected or Byzantine Musical Symbols must be removed fromthe CD pending further development of the proposal. We believe the repertoire to be generally suitable, but without
further investigation with regard to Unicode properties it would be premature to encode them.
5. We consider the Western Musical Symbols to be inadequately specified. While we understand the proposed useof these characters as musical dingbats in plain text, we also see that the repertoire contains characters likeWESTERN MUSICAL SYMBOL BEAM-START and WESTERN MUSICAL SYMBOL BEAM-END, which are similar to characters like thecartouching characters proposed for Egyptian hieroglyphs. While we approve of such characters in principle, there
are apparently implementation questions involved, and we would like to see these questions addressed, sinceobviously these are implementation-type characters, not just dingbat-type characters. Further, we would like thisrepertoire to be presented to the publishers of music-typesetting software with regard to its possible utility to them.
These shortcomings must be addressed or Western Musical Symbols must be removed from the CD pending
further development of the proposal.
6. We object to the names of a number of the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols. The characters at 1D6701D6A3 and 1D7F6-1D7FF bear the name MONOSPACE, but this term is a misnomer and is technically incorrect.
From the Glossary of typesetting terms published by the University of Chicago Press in 1994:
Monospacing: Setting with an unvarying amount of space between elements, usually when all lettershave the same set width, as with a typewriter
These characters are elements , not spaces . Accordingly, the names of these characters must be either
MATHEMATICAL MONOWIDTH CAPITAL X or MATHEMATICAL FIXED-WIDTH CAPITAL X and so on.
Also the glyphs for the PI SYMBOLS are not the usual ones seen. There should be more of a horizontal hat, not just aswung-over right arm.

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