The issue is both political and technical. We need practical solutions for implementation because designing for exceptions would be problematic. We expect that character sets do not pertain to either CSI 1 or 3. The issue is most relevant to transcription of the title code. Document delivery, TOC representation, and de-duplication among citations are the most likely applications of CSI 2.
Special characters continue to pose problems, especially for math and music.
Like the problem of duplication, we have no data on the percentage of titles that start with special characters. Although there was some interest in using the language of the title, the group agreed that the best working rule at this time is to spell out symbols in English. In this case, interoperability is of the most importance. At the next committee meeting, we will continue the character set discussion with additional information and input from other committee members. This table indicates character types, field lengths, case sensitivity, and allow able punctuation.