Document ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 N 335 Meeting Report Plenary Meeting of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 18-22 August 1997, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Reported by: James W. Moore, Convener, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 The MITRE Corporation moorej@acm.org 703.883.7396 SC22 is the parent body of WG9 in the ISO/IEC JTC1 hierarchy. It conducts a plenary meeting annually. I attended in my role as convener of WG9. SC22 conducted a great deal of business related to the re-engineering initiative within JTC1. The results reported below are selected for particular relevance to the business of WG9. Since the last plenary meeting, new members have joined SC22, hence WG9. The new P (participating) members are Ireland and Norway and the new O (observing) member is Israel. I was required to provide a schedule for all WG9 projects in progress. The information that I provided is as follows: - - Project JTC1.22.15291 (ASIS): WD 6/97; CD 9/97; DIS 5/98; IS 5/99. - - Projects JTC1.22.10.04 and 05 (complex arithmetic): IS 3/98. During their national body report, Japan noted that they have translated the Ada standard, ISO/IEC 8652:1995, into Japanese and intend to process it as a national standard. In behalf of WG9, I requested that Erhard Ploedereder and Bob Duff be named as the Project Editors of project JTC1.22.10.01 (the Ada standard). This request was approved. In behalf of WG9, I requested that Andreas Koeller be named as the Project Editor of project JTC1.22.31 (SAMeDL). This request was approved. In behalf of WG9, I requested that the CD registration ballot and the Final CD Balloting for project JTC1.22.15291 (ASIS) be conducted concurrently. This request was approved. We can anticipate that this ballot will commence in September if we promptly provide the draft for balloting. In behalf of WG9, I requested that SC22 support a request to JTC1 to add PostScript to the list of acceptable formats for the electronic distribution of documents. This request was NOT approved. Apparently, this issue is old and contentious and few people want to reconsider it. In a straw vote within SC22, a slight majority of delegations supported the request but the margin was considered too narrow to constitute grounds for a strong request to JTC1 to change the existing plan of action. One of the other Working Group conveners has agreed to provide an FTP mechanism which we may use to produce PDF from PostScript documents. In behalf of WG9, I requested that SC22 make a request to JTC1 to allow WG9 to provide public access to any Technical Corrigenda document prepared for the Ada standard. (Public access is already permitted for Defect Reports and Working Group Responses.) This request was approved; it is anticipated that JTC1 will approve the request because there is precedent. This is a good opportunity to report on the status of a few other SC22 activities that are proceeding independently of the plenary meeting: the DIS ballots for 13813 and 13814 (complex arithmetic) are currently underway; also underway is the ballot for approval of the New Work Item requested by the HRG. It was reported that the ISO/IEC standard on character sets, 10646-1, continues to be revised. Thirteen amendments have been processed and six more are underway. Several Latin alphabets now exist and more are being prepared. The continued change is regarded as instability by some parties and has caused some concern. A more completed description of this situation can be found in SC22 N 2558. Some of you may be interested in the status of the CD balloting of the C++ document. The WG convener reported that about ten issues remain to be resolved; the others have been unanimously resolved. It is expected that the final issues will be resolved and the document will go to Final DIS ballot shortly after their planned November 1997. There is some consideration of a plan whereby the WGs for C and C++ will collocate their meetings and a plan whereby the C++ WG and the C WG would agree that the responsibility for maintenance of the common portions of the languages would be delegated to the C WG. Some of you may be interested in the status of issues related to Java. The convener of the Java study group reported that the request of Sun Microsystems for recognition as a PAS submitter was disapproved with comments from several nations. At this time, Sun has not yet responded. The JSG convener also reported that ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association) has approved standard 262 on ECMAScript, the language commonly known as JavaScript. Their standard is publicly available on the ECMA web site and will be submitted to JTC1 for fast-track processing. Future plenary meetings of SC22 are planned as follows: 24-28 August 1998, Copenhagen, Denmark 20-24 September 1999, Berlin, Germany 2000, Kyoto, Japan (tentative) 2001, Austria (tentative) 2002, Finland (tentative) I have previously noted that JTC1 (including SC22) plans to convert to fully electronic document processing and distribution mechanisms by autumn of 1997. Plans for the conduct of SC22's business were discussed. I will provide more information on these mechanisms as they are implemented.