ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34 N0012

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34

Information Technology ---

Document Description and Processing Languages

TITLE:	AFII Liaison Report
SOURCE:	Asmus Freytag, AFII President
PROJECT:
PROJECT EDITOR:
STATUS:	Liaison Statement
ACTION:	For information; SC34 must also take action on the transfer of the 10036 RA
DATE:	2 November 1998
DISTRIBUTION:	SC34 and Liaisons
REFER TO:
REPLY TO:	Dr. James David Mason (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 Chaiman) Lockheed Martin Energy Systems Information Management Services 1060 Commerce Park, M.S. 6480 Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6480 U.S.A. Telephone: +1 423 574-6973 Facsimile: +1 423 574-0004 Network: [email protected] http://www.ornl.gov/sgml/wg4/ ftp://ftp.ornl.gov/pub/sgml/wg4/

AFII Liaison Report

AFII has had two main projects: Registration of glyphs and Printing the next edition of ISO/IEC 10646-1.

With increasing cooperation between ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 and The Unicode Consortium, we are expecting that printing the upcoming second edition of 10646 will be the last time we are engaging in this project.

All of our member companies are also members of The Unicode Consortium. We have therefore decided to discontinue AFII as a separate entity. The Unicode Consortium is interested in continuing the activities I mentioned above.

We would therefore like to formally notify JTC and the TMB that AFII intends to discontinue its activities as registration authority. We recommned that the Unicode Consortium be considered as the new registration authority under ISO/IEC 10036.

During my tenure, one (1) glyph was registered, for the Euro sign. No fee was charged for this registration, however, it is the intent of the RA that this was the last time the RA absorbed the cost of registrations. Some interest has been expressed by the user community to have glyphs registered for all the characters that are new to the second edition of 10646, however, no sponsor has been found.

With the intended transfer of the Registration Authority to the Unicode Consortium, AFII has deferred developing a revision of its fee structure so as to allow the new registration authority to reflect its true costs.

There have been several sales of the Glyph registry.

AFII will cease operations no later than the end of its fiscal year 99, August 31, 1999. We hope that transfer of registration authority can be completed by that time.

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Asmus Freytag

President

AFII

The AFII Report is accompanied by a letter to JTC1, indicating their desire to tranfer the Registration Authority for ISO/IEC 10036 to the Unicode Consortium:

From:	Asmus Freytag [SMTP:[email protected]]
Sent:	Saturday, October 31, 1998 6:24 PM
To:	Matthew Deane; '[email protected]'
Cc:	Lisa Rajchel
Subject:	Glyph Registration under ISO/IEC 10036
Matthew,
The Unicode Consortium has been approached by several of its members who are also members of AFII with the request to continue the glyph registration work under ISO/IEC 10036 after AFII is dissolved. This year, the Unicode Board of directors approved this request.

The Unicode Consortium was founded in 1991 and its main purpose is to develop, maintain and promote the use of a 16-bit universal character set. From the beginning, Unicode has enjoyed close cooperation with and later C liaison status to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2, and more recently applied for C liaison status with ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20.

The Consortium has more than 50 companies and over 60 individuals as members in altogether four categories of membership. The Unicode Standard is now going into its third edition.

The Consortium has enjoyed a stable source of funding form memberships and would be able to guarantee the continuation of glyph registration work, provided that cost-based fees are charged for registration requests. The technical expert who carried out the registration activity for AFII has indicated his interest in continuing his work under contract with the Consortium, but many of our members could contribute similar expertise, should this be needed.

Please let us know if you require any additional information.
A./
Asmus Freytag
Vice President
The Unicode Consortium