Progressing ENV 13710 to EN status
Background
The European Ordering Rules (ENV 13710) were adopted in CEN/TC304 as a European profile of ISO/IEC 14651 and the Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA) to define a specifically European profile for the ordering of character strings in multilingual documents for those scripts that are used in the European Union, namely Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic. They also serve as a common basis for national member bodies to define their national profiles of ISO/IEC 14651 and the UCA.
ENV 13710 was later extended in CR 14400 for the Armenic and Georgian scripts and updated to the then most current version of ISO/IEC 14651 which is regularly enhanced to cover new characters that are added to ISO/IEC 10646 / the Unicode Standard. The choice of using a CR for this purpose was dictated purely by expediencies and formalities. It does not make sense otherwise.
Reception
ENV 13710 has been well received amongst its stakeholders. It has been implemented in a variety of software products including databases such as Mimer SQL, various Unix systems and via the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR starting with version 1.5) in a large percentage of current software and operating systems. It also currently serves as the basis for specifying various national ordering standards including DIN 5007 and the Italian ordering rules (where, indeed, it is used as the national specification as is) and is heavily used in ETSI specification such as ETSI ES 202 130 on the keyboards of mobile phones as well as reference in CWAs such as CWA 14051, CWA 14094, and CWA 15526. It has been translated, amongst others, into German and Polish and been transposed into national standards in some countries (e. g. DIN ENV 13710).
Further Progress
Given this positive reception a consolidated version of ENV 13710 was planned to be progressed to EN ballot in CEN/TC304 (cf. Resolution # 2 in CEN/TC304 N1005, the Minutes of the 19th (and last) plenary of CEN/TC304 in December 2001) with Marc Wilhelm Küster continuing as editor. However, the committee was made dormant before that resolution could be acted upon.
By now the situation with this ENV has become more difficult, especially given its ENV status. A revision is needed. ENV 13710 and CR 14400 need to be consolidated and brought up to date with the most current version of 14651 and the UCA. Furthermore, the progress to an EN ballot needs to be urgently pursued.
Küster is prepared to serve as editor on a voluntary basis.
A future EN can also be a test case for the Standards as databases concept, given that both ISO/IEC 14651 and the UCA continue to be enhanced with new characters over time. Both ISO/IEC 14651 and the UCA as well as ISO/IEC 10646 and the Unicode Standard which they heavily reference are freely available on the Web.
Required action
The CEN/ISSS CDFG asks the CEN/ISSS Forum and CEN Central Secretariat for advice on how to best proceed in the revision process in the absence of an active TC.