WatchThatPage notified me this morning that the "Proposed New Characters" table at http://www.unicode.org/unicode/alloc/Pipeline.html has been updated, to include characters and scripts discussed and accepted during the UTC meeting.
However, the dates of the new items are in the format dd-mmm-yy, as in "07-Nov-02," whereas previous entries had been in the quasi-ISO 8601 format yy-mmm-dd, as in "02-Aug-20." These two conflicting date formats appear side-by-side in the table, making it appear that some characters are scheduled to be approved in 2007 or 2020. My suggestion: Pick a format, then -- and here's the important part -- make all the years *four digits long* so this won't happen again. The habit of writing 4-digit years that Y2K popularized should be continued, because of the potential ambiguity between days and 2-digit years (exhibited here) that will persist for the next 3 decades. (As an additional pedantic note, the new items are marked with the date only, without the word "Accepted" that is present for the older items. However, as these new items all appear in the "Accepted" table the intent should be obvious.) -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California
