Re: Proposed note about C064 and C065

I'm not very happy about this. I think the intent of the WG at the time
of authoring the document was clearly different from the text below.
In my understanding, the WG felt that it was important that all specs
would use the best available (i.e. newest) references to the Unicode
Standard, even if this meant the use of a minor version and longer
text in the reference section.

I think there were various reasons for this (I don't think they were
discussed explicitly):

- Contrary to many other specifications, the main point distinguishing
  major from minor versions in the case of the Unicode Standard is
  whether a book is produced or not. Production of a book is not only
  related to content, but also to timelines,... It is therefore easily
  possible, and has happened in the past, that a 'minor' update added
  important scripts and characters.
- It seems that there are some people that have difficulties of getting
  the idea of a generic reference. As an example, the reference to
  Unicode 2.0 in XML 1.0 was (except for name syntax) clearly intended
  as a generic reference, but many people thought that the spec as
  written made it impossible to use post-Unicode 2.0 characters *in data*.
  To help such people, even if just a little bit, using the newest
  reference may be better. (and of course the "as updated from time to time"
  text is even more important).
- It seems unhelpful to the reader of the spec (and remember, there are
  usually many more readers than writers) to have to find out on her own
  about already available updates. It is clear that we can't list future
  updates, but dropping current updates just as a convenience to the
  spec writer seems inappropriate.

The above reasons, and the fact that the WG itself carefully made sure
that the full version (including minors) was in the reference seem to
support this. If we want to change this, I suggest that:
- We preferably do so in a general update of Charmod.
- We actually change the examples to match what the spec says.
- We look at ways to say this in simpler terms that don't make
  the spec more difficult to read by piling notes onto it.

Regards,     Martin.

At 22:57 07/02/06, Fran〓ois Yergeau wrote:
>
>Note to be added after C064 and C065 in Charmod Fundamentals:
>
>NOTE : C064 and C065 are meant to avoid specifications referring to obsolete and potentially unavailable versions of the standards.  It should *not* be construed as an obligation to track the very latest update version of Unicode, especially when a specification has no need for this level of details and all is that is desired is a generic reference.  Specification editors may consult http://www.unicode.org/versions/latest for the latest version of Unicode and search the ISO Catalogue from http://www.iso.ch/ for the latest version and published amendments of ISO/IEC 10646.
>
>


#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

Received on Tuesday, 20 February 2007 03:21:55 UTC