As many readers may know, the Unicode Technical Committee was due to start a four day meeting yesterday at the Redmond, Washington State, USA campus of Microsoft, that is, on 20 August 2002.
Here in England I am interested to know of what is happening and to learn of news from the meeting. So, from here in England I am starting this thread in the mailing list in the hope that some of the people at the meeting might like to post news of what is happening at the meeting please. This is not in the same news gathering league as having CNN and other reporters providing live reports from outside the venue and catching quotes from prominent members of the Committee as they arrive and depart and there being live press briefings from an official spokesperson, yet in its way it is still news gathering and hopefully will be of interest to other participants in this mailing list as well. It is the early hours of the morning in Washington State at present. It is hoped that when delegates get up for breakfast that they might look in their emails and make early morning responses, or perhaps arrange for an official briefing to be posted later in the day. If I were conducting a live interview with the committee chairman or with an official spokesperson I would ask the following questions. * What was discussed yesterday (Tuesday) please, and what formal decisions, if any, were taken please? * How many people attended please? * Is it only companies which are full members of the Unicode Consortium who send delegates to the meeting, or are there also representatives of organizations who do not vote in decisions present as well? * What is the agenda for today please? * What is the agenda for the rest of the week please? * Will there be a press statement at the close of the meeting please, and if so, will it also be posted in the Unicode mailing list please? Depending upon the responses to the above, I would, if the topics had not been covered, ask specific questions related to the following. * Has there been, or is there on the agenda, any discussion of the wording in the Unicode specification about the use of the Private Use Area and, if so, are any changes to that wording being implemented? * Has there been, or is there on the agenda, any discussion concerning the status of the code points U+FFF9 through to U+FFFC please? There has been some discussion recently in the Unicode mailing list about these code points, as regards issues of U+FFF9 through to U+FFFB as an issue, the issue of using U+FFFC as a single issue, and the issue of using U+FFF9 through to U+FFFC all together. Is the committee discussing these issues at all and, if so, are they discussing the matter of whether U+FFFC can be used in sending documents from a sender to a receiver please? Is there any discussion of a possible rewording, or changing of meaning, of the wording about the U+FFF9 through to U+FFFC code points in the Unicode specification please? * Are any matters concerning how the Unicode specification interacts with the way that fonts are implemented being discussed please? If so, is due care being taken that as font format is not, at present, an international standards matter that therefore the committee must take great care to ensure that Unicode does not become dependent upon a usage, express or implied, of the intellectual property rights or format of any particular font format specification? * Is there any discussion of the possibility of adding further noncharacters please, considering either or both adding some more noncharacters in plane 0 and a large block of noncharacters in one of the planes 1 through to 14? * Is the committee discussing the issue of interpretation, namely as to how, if various people read the published specification so as to have different meanings, how people may receive a ruling as to the formally correct meaning of the wording of the specification. This recently arose in relation to the U+FFFC character and has previously arisen in relation to what is correct usage of the Private Use Area, so there are at least two areas where the issue of interpretation has arisen. I am hoping that regular postings of what is happening in the meeting will appear as the meeting progresses so that there is both information for people who may be affected by what is decided at the meeting and also so that participants in the meeting might be able to gather end user feedback upon any topics that arise at the meeting before they make any decision which may affect end users. Is there an official press spokesperson for the meeting please? William Overington 21 August 2002
