From: Thomas Plum [tplum@plumhall.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 10:23 PM
To: John Benito; Ann Bennett; Frank Farance; John Hill; Rex Jaeschke;
Nobuyoshi Mori; Don Schricker; Keld Jørn Simonsen; Willem Wakker;
Winkler, Arnold F; Tom Plum (WG21)
Subject: Re: Agenda for Character set ad-hoc - 26th August

I think C++ was the first language to define extended identifiers
... anyway, one of the first.  We know that the table embedded
in the C++ standard is an old table.  For my part, I was waiting
until WG20 and Unicode Consortium worked out some process for
harmonizing the process of defining extended-id characters.  But
we've seen Java, ECMAscript, and C# pointing to Unicode specs,
meanwhile C and Cobol use WG20 tables, so I've kept quiet
and proposed no changes to the old C++ tables.

SC22 should take some note of the definition (in XML?) of
characters that should _never_ be used in an identifier.  One
fairly-reasonable approach to identifiers is to allow anything
that isn't on the black-list.

The Java spec refers the language spec to the system API spec:
IsIdentifierStart and IsIdentifierPart (roughly ... from memory).
SC22 specs should encourage use of system API facilities; let
only one group of people have to track this evolution, not
every compiler group.

If WG20 believes that Unicode got it wrong on two, or three, or
N, specific identifier characters, then publish an N-paragraph
TR that clarifies what the problems are, but otherwise point to
the relevant Unicode spec.  Having an independently-
maintained table is a nuisance.



At 02:27 PM 7/22/2002 -0700, John Benito wrote:
 >Hi All,
 >
 >This is just a reminder that I would like
 >to have the documents for the agenda by
 >the 9th of August, as specified in my mail
 >of 25-Jun.  I have sent the preliminary
 >agenda to the SC22 secretariat for circulation,
 >with the forewarning that it will be updated
 >before the ad-hoc.
 >
 >Thanks,
 >
 >jb -

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