ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG2 N2679

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 N 3694
DATE: 2003-10-31

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2
Coded Character Sets
Secretariat: Japan (JISC)

DOC. TYPE

Business Plan

TITLE

SC 2 Business Plan (Period Covered: October 2002 - September 2003) [JTC 1 N 7227]

SOURCE

Prof. Kohji Shibano, SC 2 Chairman

PROJECTSTATUSThis document will be considered at the JTC 1 Plenary Meeting to be held in Singapore,
2003-11-17/21.

ACTION ID

FYIDUE DATE
DISTRIBUTION

P, O and L Members of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 ; ISO/IEC JTC 1 Secretariat; ISO/IEC ITTFACCESS LEVELOpenISSUE NO.

171

FILE

NAME
SIZE (KB)
PAGES

02n3694.pdf
6Secretariat ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 - IPSJ/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 *Standard
Organization Accredited by JISC
Telephone: +81-3-3431-2808; Facsimile: +81-3-3431-6493; E-mail: kimura@itscj.ipsj.or.jp

ISO/IEC JTC 1 N7227

2003-10-20

Replaces:

ISO/IEC JTC 1
Information Technology

Document Type: Business Plan
Document Title:

SC 2 Business Plan

Document Source:

SC 2 Chairman

Project Number:
Document Status: This document is circulated for review and consideration at the November 2003 JTC 1 Plenary
meeting in Singapore.

Action ID:

ACT

Due Date:
Distribution:
Medium:Disk Serial No:
No. of Pages:

5

Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1, American National Standards Institute, 25 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036; Telephone: 1 212 642 4932;
Facsimile: 1 212 840 2298; Email: lrajchel@ansi.org

BUSINESS PLAN FOR JTC 1/SC 2
PREPARED: 2003-09-30
PERIOD COVERED: October 2002 – September 2003SUBMITTED BY: Kohji SHIBANO, Chair of JTC 1/SC 2

1.0 MANAGEMENT SUMMARY:
1.1

JTC 1/ SC 2 STATEMENT OF SCOPE

Title: Coded Character Sets
Scope: Standardization of graphic character sets and their characteristics
associated control functions, their coded representation for informationinterchange and code extension techniques. Excluded: audio and picture coding.

1.2

PROJECT REPORT

Total Number of Projects: 50 including all subprojects• New projects: None
• New subproject: None
• New revision work: None
• Withdrawn project: None

1.3

COOPERATION AND COMPETITION

SC 2 is playing the key role in the area of coded character set standardization.
SC 2 has been very successful in cooperation with ISO/TC 46, JTC 1/SC 22, JTC
1/SC 31, JTC 1/SC 32, and JTC 1/SC 35. In response to the last JTC 1 Meetingon Cooperation and Coordination of Cross Cultural and Linguistic Mattersrecommendation, SC 2 synchronously with SC 22 issued the letter ballot on thepossible transfer of the project 14651 (JTC 1.22.30.02.02) from SC 22 to SC 2.
The SC 2 ballot has passed.
SC 2 has also been successful in cooperation with external standard
organizations, such as ITU-T, and with industry consortia, such as Unicode Inc.,
ISOC, and W3C.
For SC 2/WG 2/IRG (Ideographic Rapporteur Group) work, TCA (Taiwan) andHKITF (Hong Kong) provided important contributions.

12.0 PERIOD REVIEW
2.1

MARKET REQUIREMENTS

As stated in the previous business plan, requirements for the development ofCoded Character Sets are still strong. For the upcoming SC 2/WG 2 meeting 67
contributions so far many of which are proposals for encoding additional scripts
and characters.
Rapid development utilizing JTC 1 procedures are mandatory for SC 2 work.
Especially, ISO/IEC 10646 development is synchronized with Unicodedevelopment. However, due to the slow process within ITTF, ISO publication of10646 is far behind the publication of Unicode. This situation should beimproved.
Widespread use of the Internet technologies, such as WWW, even an ordinary
person now is faced with and has to use ISO standard such as 8859 series ofstandards and 10646.
Therefore, easy access to SC 2 standards is still crucial to avoid confusions
between users and implementers.

2.2ACHIEVEMENTS

Published projects: 1• ISO/IEC 2375: 2003, Procedure for registration of escape sequences (2003-0215)
Projects progressed to FDIS/FDAM:• Amendment 2 to ISO/IEC 10646-1: 2000, Limbu, Tai Le, Yijing and othercharacters• Amendment 1 to ISO/IEC 10646-2: 2001, Aegean, Ugaritic, and othercharacters• FDIS 8859-7, 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets -- Part 7:
Latin/Greek alphabet
Projects progressed to FCD/FPDAM: None

2.3

RESOURCESSC 2 should be considered as one of the largest SCs in JTC 1 in terms ofmembership. The number of current P-member National Bodies is 35 and Omember National Bodies is 11. All WGs and all developing projects haveassigned officials. In this sense, SC 2 has sufficient resources.

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3.0 FOCUS NEXT WORK PERIOD
3.1

DELIVERABLES:The following projects are expected to be published during the next reporting
period.
Deliverables during the next period.
• Consolidated version of ISO/IEC 10646 (Consolidation of ISO/IEC 10646-1:
2000 and its amendments, ISO/IEC 10646-2: 2001 and its amendment)• ISO/IEC 8859-7, 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets -- Part 7:
Latin/Greek alphabet

3.2

STRATEGIES:SC 2 should focus on the following four areas;(1) Provide easy access to SC 2 standards,(2) Support for new character coding requirements from developing countries,(3) Enhance visibility of SC 2 activities.
(4) Clarification of character coding schemes.

3.2.1 RISKSSC 2 whishes to express its seriously concern about CPSG (Commercial Policy
Steering Group) recommendations and the following Council Resolution.
Council Resolution 32/2003
Council, regarding the public availability of country, currency and language codes,
notes the two following points of clarification:a)the reproduction of the full standard should follow the normal ISO copyrightrules;b)no copyright fee should be charged for the reproduction of the 2-digit codes ofISO 3166, ISO 4217 and ISO 639 in books, magazines, academic work and forinternal use by companies, institutes and organizations;c)regarding the proposal that software developers or commercial resellers
requesting permission to embed ISO codes in their products for resale would berequired to purchase each code in electronic form and to pay to the member bodyconcerned or the Central Secretariat, as appropriate, either an annual fee or a onetime fee and any applicable maintenance fees, asks the CPSG to elaborate further
on the clarification it wants from Council and to submit a new proposal.

SC 2 supports ISO copyright rules on its publications. However, if the same
copyright rules applied to embed ISO codes into software products as found in
CPSG recommendations, implementers will go to free de fact standards. Thus
CPSG recommendation c) hurts future SC 2 standard development. SC 2
strongly asks JTC 1 to object to CPSG recommendation c).

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3.2.2 OPPORTUNITIESSC 2 standards are and have been really effective for information interchange.
However, as for internal processing codes, implementers' private coded character
sets have been widely used.
Growing interests and requirements for real global information processing, there
is an opportunities for SC 2 standards not only for information interchange but
also for information processing including internationalized software portability.

3.3

WORK PROGRAM PRIORITIESConsolidation of ISO/IEC 10646 is the highest priority.
Standardization relating to characteristics of graphic character is also important.

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