Log for Chat_20090824
Participants: Marc Bernd Håvard Orn (Staðlaráð Íslands) Mike Mina Laridan for Gaïd Erkki
14:10:57 * Mina Laridan CE joins cdfg 14/09/2009 14:12:31 * Bernd joins cdfg 14/09/2009 14:12:53 ‹Bernd› Hello 14/09/2009 14:12:55 * Mina Laridan joins cdfg 14/09/2009 14:12:59 * Mina Laridan CE quit (timeout) 14/09/2009 14:13:11 ‹Mina Laridan› Hello 14/09/2009 14:13:36 ‹Bernd› I haven't read your name before. Are you in CDFG? 14/09/2009 14:14:01 ‹Mina Laridan› not really, I am replacing my colleague Gaid Le Gall who is on holydays 14/09/2009 14:14:11 ‹Bernd› aha 14/09/2009 14:16:55 ‹Mina Laridan› and responsible for Workshop MEEK - the same chat 14/09/2009 14:17:44 * Marc joins cdfg 14/09/2009 14:18:15 ‹Marc› Hello! 14/09/2009 14:18:55 ‹Bernd› Hello! Good you could make it this time 14/09/2009 14:20:15 ‹Marc› Sorry for last time... was a bit chaotic 14/09/2009 14:23:44 * Håvard joins cdfg 14/09/2009 14:24:10 * Håvard quit (timeout) 14/09/2009 14:24:15 * Håvard joins cdfg 14/09/2009 14:25:37 ‹Marc› I've uploaded the agenda for today's meeting to http://wiki.cdfg.org/Chat_20090914 14/09/2009 14:25:44 ‹Håvard› I am sorry that a "family logistics issue" makes it difficult to attend the whole time. I will be running back and forth. I will keep the chat window open, but I may not be there looking in through it. 14/09/2009 14:26:27 ‹Marc› So, we'll try to shout whenever there's something particularly important 14/09/2009 14:28:24 ‹Marc› I copy-paste the agenda here also for reference purposes: 14/09/2009 14:28:30 ‹Marc› Involvement in the Commission's new business platform promoting multilingualism: status 14/09/2009 14:28:41 ‹Marc› Name writing in public register: state of the action item from the CEN/CENELEC ICT Forum meeting on 24.3.2009 14/09/2009 14:28:55 ‹Marc› CDFG: strategies for the future 14/09/2009 14:29:06 ‹Marc› Vienna initiative: state of the play 14/09/2009 14:29:13 ‹Marc› Any other business 14:32:20 ‹Marc› OK, it's 16:30, so let's get going 14:32:58 ‹Marc› Bernd, I think the first point is for you 14:33:46 ‹Bernd› Well, I received the invitation for the Business forum meeting on 22nd. 14/09/2009 14:33:48 * Orn joins cdfg 14/09/2009 14:34:16 ‹Bernd› So afterwards I will be able to report in detail. 14/09/2009 14:34:42 ‹Marc› Good, thank you for realizing this! 14/09/2009 14:34:50 ‹Marc› Hello Orn! 14/09/2009 14:36:28 ‹Marc› Bernd: I expect that you'll be keeping us updated over the project progress. I am very happy to see that we're represented on that forum 14/09/2009 14:36:48 ‹Bernd› Sure. I had a look on the agenada of the forum meeting; it will be mostly administrative issues and recapitulating existing work. 14/09/2009 14:37:08 ‹Marc› Still, it is probably important to be present 14/09/2009 14:37:35 ‹Orn› OK, found you guys. 14/09/2009 14:38:05 ‹Marc› Would you like to introduce yourself? 14/09/2009 14:38:06 ‹Bernd› And I will try to throw in a reference to report of the High-level group und multilingualism (2008) which mentions Unicode compatibility explicitly. 14/09/2009 14:38:35 ‹Marc› Please do --- also for the name writing issue this is key 14:40:34 ‹Marc› On the name writing issue I've unfortunately no news 14/09/2009 14:40:51 ‹Marc› this is still in the mills 14/09/2009 14:42:10 ‹Marc› I expect, though, that it will continue its ways. Any suggestions on how we might speed things up? 14/09/2009 14:42:33 ‹Marc› <Orn› Hi Marc, I am Orn Kaldalons, attending for FUT or Staðlaráð Íslands, the Standards body of Iceland. 14/09/2009 14:42:47 ‹Marc› (copying that from the test tab) 14/09/2009 14:43:07 ‹Marc› ‹Marc› Great and welcome. Could I copy this to the main chat? 14/09/2009 14:43:28 * Mike joins cdfg 14/09/2009 14:43:41 ‹Mina Laridan› about the proposal to the ICT Forum, I just gather that Finland should contact DIN - the CDFG Secretariat in order to activate a new work item 14/09/2009 14:44:14 ‹Mike› Hello - I am sorry I am late - I am in a vocie conference and massively multitasking 14/09/2009 14:44:26 ‹Marc› Hello Mike! 14/09/2009 14:44:32 ‹Mike› voice not vocie! 14/09/2009 14:44:52 ‹Marc› @Mina: Yes, though with a small correction: DIN holds the TC304 secretariat, not that of the CDFG 14/09/2009 14:45:12 * Erkki joins cdfg 14/09/2009 14:45:37 ‹Marc› the problem being that the project would need financial support, possibly in the context of the ICT standards support programme 14:46:53 ‹Mina Laridan› then you just need to submit to us a proposal before next year 15 May 2010 14/09/2009 14:47:19 ‹Erkki› Marc, We discussed the feasibility of Germany footing the bill. 14/09/2009 14:47:49 ‹Erkki› The project will otherwise be delayed hopelessly. 14/09/2009 14:48:06 ‹Bernd› I have no new information on that yet. Anyone else heard something? 14/09/2009 14:48:31 ‹Marc› No, unfortunately nothing reliable yet 14:49:09 ‹Erkki› Marc, when do you expect to be able to tell us about any move? 14/09/2009 14:49:30 ‹Marc› but Erkki, you're certainly right that a delay until May 2010 would not be desirable 14/09/2009 14:50:01 ‹Marc› given the typical speed of the approval process, this would mean a project start towards the end of 2010, of course in the case of approval 14/09/2009 14:50:17 ‹Marc› which would be by no means certain 14:52:23 ‹Marc› @Bernd: maybe we could jointly raise that subject again with DIN and the government 14:54:03 ‹Bernd› Good idea. I would need a text that I can present to the government. 14/09/2009 14:54:52 ‹Erkki› Bernd and Marc, I could participate in the formulating team. 14/09/2009 14:54:57 ‹Bernd› An outline of the project. 14/09/2009 14:55:18 ‹Marc› Good. Maybe let's take the details of coordination offline and arrange a Skype or phone chat to fix the details 14/09/2009 14:55:18 ‹Bernd› Thank you Erkki! 14/09/2009 14:56:43 ‹Marc› e.g. towards the evening of the 21st, i.e. in one week 14/09/2009 14:56:56 ‹Erkki› We'd need a common core repertoire plus fallback rules for non-core Latin characters. For non-Latin characters, we'd need the transposition rules. 14:58:23 ‹Marc› agreed for this first part. the fallback rules are going to be more tricky 14/09/2009 14:58:46 ‹Marc› on a pan-European level at least 14/09/2009 14:58:49 ‹Bernd› Transposition rules are handled quite inconsistently. Just remember the different spellings for Al Qaeda. I would rather stick with Latin and non-core atin. 14/09/2009 14:59:44 ‹Marc› or, indeed, a Latin part and a Greek + Cyrillic part 14/09/2009 15:00:29 ‹Erkki› Marc, without the fallback rules, the interoperability will break. E.g., we need to specify that thorn will be represented by th and eth by d when communicating between registers. 14/09/2009 15:01:07 ‹Marc› wouldn't it be exactly the goal to avoid that for Latin letters? 14/09/2009 15:01:18 ‹Bernd› Ah, this kind of fallback rules. Yes, we need those. 14/09/2009 15:02:08 ‹Bernd› Also for a Romani theta-like character. 15:02:24 ‹Erkki› Sorry, there are Latin letters that are totally unfamiliar to any and all civil servants of the other EU countries. 14/09/2009 15:03:01 ‹Marc› unfortunately not the same across countries... 14/09/2009 15:03:23 ‹Erkki› I'd maintain that the Romai theta like character is a national issue (where allowed in names). 14/09/2009 15:03:25 ‹Marc› and with very different transliteration customs already in place... 14/09/2009 15:03:56 ‹Bernd› We could have two levels, with fallback rules for Runic etc as default and a second level with þ and ð. 14/09/2009 15:04:36 ‹Marc› why Runic etc.? These are hardly used in European names these days 14/09/2009 15:04:57 ‹Bernd› I mean þ and ð 14/09/2009 15:04:58 ‹Erkki› Actually, for Greek and Cyrillic names, I'd stick to those registered in official travel documents (but not the machine readable part). 14/09/2009 15:06:22 ‹Marc› I'd maintain that a forward looking system should handle both: 14/09/2009 15:06:34 ‹Erkki› Otherwise, CIEC 14 would appear a good starting point. It, however, does not define the fallbacks. 14/09/2009 15:06:40 ‹Marc› a) the original name as registered in the (European) country of origin 14/09/2009 15:06:52 ‹Bernd› The CIEC Agreement states that all Latin characters need to be taken over and all non-Latin ones need to be transposed according to ISO rules. 14/09/2009 15:06:56 ‹Marc› b) a (possibly unstandardized) transliterated form 14/09/2009 15:07:24 ‹Bernd› But for example the Greeks use ELOT instead of ISO 15:07:54 ‹Marc› virtually all countries use national standards for transliteration 14/09/2009 15:08:15 ‹Erkki› Bernd, not true. Only those Latin base characters that are used in a given country, need be recorded. All diacritics attached to them would have to preserved, though. 14/09/2009 15:08:41 ‹Bernd› oh yes, that's more precise. 14/09/2009 15:09:09 ‹Marc› with the base characters being different from country to country 14/09/2009 15:09:16 ‹Marc› cf. e.g. cases like sharp s 14/09/2009 15:09:23 ‹Bernd› yes, it creates a problem with x and w. 14/09/2009 15:10:03 ‹Erkki› Bernd, if the Greeks use ELOT for transliteration, that's fine, because the other countries would use the romanised name that Greece uses in their travel documents. 14/09/2009 15:10:13 ‹Marc› I fear that if we're really trying to impose a uniform transliteration convention implementing the CIEC rules, we're in trouble 14/09/2009 15:10:14 ‹Bernd› sharp s is another special case, as it is a ligature like æ and œ. 14/09/2009 15:10:33 ‹Marc› well, sort of and sort of not 14/09/2009 15:10:55 ‹Marc› unlike æ and œ, you're not at all free to use it or leave it 14/09/2009 15:11:16 ‹Erkki› The Danes have not accepted æ being a ligature. 14/09/2009 15:11:28 ‹Marc› true 15:12:03 ‹Erkki› Unfortunately, I arrived late and have to leave early, i.e., now. 14/09/2009 15:12:16 ‹Marc› we're going to end up with a large number of possible base characters without consensus 14/09/2009 15:12:33 ‹Marc› but, OK, let's take this offline and present our conclusions to the next chat 14/09/2009 15:12:49 ‹Marc› Erkki: before you leave: would Monday evening in a week work for you? 14/09/2009 15:12:54 ‹Erkki› Marc, unless we try, the mess is guaranteed to be enormous. 15:13:31 ‹Bernd› So we will probably have a set of base base and extended base characters… 14/09/2009 15:13:33 ‹Erkki› If we can start at 16.00, since I again have to leave at 17.10. 14/09/2009 15:13:43 ‹Marc› No, I believe it is not, as long as you use the original form as registered in the country of origin as the basis for transmission 14/09/2009 15:13:58 ‹Mike› Good luck - I have now 100% attention on this chat and I am impressed at how many things I do not know 14/09/2009 15:14:01 * Håvard quit (timeout) 14/09/2009 15:15:02 ‹Bernd› Next week I would have to quit at 17:30. 14/09/2009 15:15:07 ‹Marc› @Erkki: OK, let's find a date offline 14/09/2009 15:16:02 ‹Erkki› OK. Bye for now! 14/09/2009 15:16:05 ‹Marc› My main argument is: transmit the name as is and leave the transliteration as a presentation issue to the national systems 14/09/2009 15:16:13 ‹Marc› but, OK, enough of this for now 15:17:16 ‹Mike› As an inexpert person in this area one thing occurs to me- there are clearly many detailed small issues to resolve - I guess the real first challenge to see if a high-level approach to the problem can be identified - or not 14/09/2009 15:17:35 ‹Mike› Bye 14/09/2009 15:17:40 ‹Marc› I fully agree 14/09/2009 15:18:07 ‹Marc› On the Vienna initiative, I think that in the absence of Eveline we cannot say too much 15:19:02 ‹Marc› CDFG: strategies for the future: this is a big topic 14/09/2009 15:19:19 ‹Marc› which Erkki put on the agenda 14/09/2009 15:19:34 ‹Marc› Anybody want to take a shot at it? 15:21:38 ‹Marc› since I think that Erkki has something to say on this, I'd propose to postpone it to the next meeting 15:22:12 ‹Marc› Leaves us with "Any other business"... 15:23:18 ‹Bernd› Does CDFG liaise with the European Parliament in some way? 14/09/2009 15:23:18 ‹Mina Laridan› not from my side 14/09/2009 15:23:31 ‹Marc› @Bernd: not officially 14/09/2009 15:23:56 ‹Marc› we've had contacts, though, with various MEPs 14/09/2009 15:24:07 ‹Bernd› I ask because after the elections, all the interest representators rush to make themselves known to the new MEPs… 14/09/2009 15:24:52 ‹Marc› Is Marco Cappato again member of the house? 14/09/2009 15:25:10 ‹Bernd› checking 15:25:33 ‹Bernd› no. 14/09/2009 15:25:43 ‹Marc› 14/09/2009 15:26:23 ‹Marc› Suggestions for a strategy to establish contacts? 15:27:11 ‹Bernd› But Doris Pack who supported 10646 in a multilingualism declaration is now chairing the Culture committee. 14/09/2009 15:28:10 ‹Marc› Very good news. Do you think we could setup a meeting with her at some point? 14/09/2009 15:28:26 ‹Bernd› Of course we can try. 14/09/2009 15:29:50 ‹Bernd› We just need a clear "politician-understandable" message. 14/09/2009 15:30:24 ‹Marc› ok, let's try to work on such a message... 14/09/2009 15:30:32 ‹Bernd› E.g. to support a certain paper, amendment, initiative etc. 14/09/2009 15:30:41 ‹Marc› incidentally, I'll possibly be in Brussels next week on the 22nd 14/09/2009 15:32:14 ‹Bernd› Probably that is a bit short (and I will be on the forum all day). 15:32:38 ‹Bernd› But I can write to her assistant anyway. 14/09/2009 15:32:58 ‹Marc› great. I'll check first if I'll really be in Brussels 15:36:03 ‹Marc› So, thanks for this productive meeting. 14/09/2009 15:36:36 ‹Marc› @Bernd, Erkki: I'll check with you offline for a good date to coordinate our activities 15:36:45 ‹Bernd› OK 15:37:36 ‹Marc› Following this I'll propose a date for the next CDFG chat, probably in 2-3 weeks time from now