Re: Proposed changes to UTF-8 draft

[Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh@sharif.edu>]

Keld,

Of course I can only comment on my own country's national body, which I 
even have some good relation with. Please read below...

On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Keld Simonsen wrote:

> You can join the national bodies, and that is feasible even for
> one-person firms.

That's not the case with ISIRI (Iran's national body). There is no
official way for a company to join ISIRI, since it is a governmental body.  
The best you can do for participating in developing national standards is
trying to convince some guy in charge that you are good enough for
participation in a committee meeting for a certain standard, and doing it
in time. Becoming active in the development of international standards is
much much harder, since ISIRI *employees* get good pays for participation
in ISO meetings, and they don't want to lose an opportunity of going to 
such a mission.

> That they are national means that you can influence
> the specifications without having big travel expenses.

My employer paid about USD 1800 for my travel to Tokyo for the recent WG2
meeting, and I added a little from my own pocket. ISIRI didn't pay
anything for my participation, although their expert that they made
accompany me couldn't even participate passively (read 'write a report for
ISIRI without my active help') in the meeting. And Iran's comments that I
had drafted myself wouldn't have got a reasonable result if I were not
present at the meeting, because it was at a conflict with Ireland
comments, so I needed to be present to resolve the conflict the Irish
representative.

> Yes, most ISO standards cost money, but if ypu want the information, the
> standards are available to you in most countries via the public library
> systems, for free.

The only public library in Iran that has copies of international standards
is the ISIRI library in Karaj (40 km from the capital). They will only let
you look at a limited number of ISO standards in a single business day
(about eight or nine, based on the attitude of the attendant), and will
not let you photocopy even a single page (which I consider fair use).

So I wish to repeat Martin's words: I have contributed to the Unicode
Standard without being a member of anything or participating in any
meeting, just as an individual that became a member of 'unicode' mailing
list and commented on a part. Contributing to ISO/IEC 10646 wouldn't have
been possible without the help of many people, including yourself, Keld.

roozbeh