John Cowan <jcowan at reutershealth dot com> wrote: >> You may personally be very determined not to make such changes, but >> presumably there is a mechanism by which in principle you might be >> outvoted within WG2. > > That would require a revolution in the membership as well as the > policies of WG2, which is committed (jointly with the Unicode > Technical Committee) to the stability of the long identifiers > (character names), however wrong-headed or even misspelled.
Perhaps that is Peter's point: that some day, changes in the membership and market pressures (which have shown to be an influence on other ISO committees) could result in a different attitude toward the written policies of WG2 from that which currently exists. I'm not saying Peter is right, that this WILL happen, just trying to articulate his point that the possibility in the future is greater than nil. <digression> There may be a parallel, however tenuous, in the Federalist Papers, a series of articles that led to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. In one passage James Madison argued that laws must contain safeguards for the rights of the minority: "It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." This argument was crucial to the shift toward writing the Constitution in specific terms, with explicit protections for citizen rights, rather than creating loosely worded laws and leaving their interpretation to leaders like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and (most importantly) their as-yet unknown successors. </digression> It seems clear that the current "enlightened" WG2 membership is committed to both the letter and spirit of the current stability policy (to the dismay of Peter, who would like to see certain changes in names, combining classes, etc.). But there is really no way we can predict whether the eventual successors to Ken, Michael, Rick, Michel, etc. will share the same commitment. Remember that most of us once believed in the stability of ISO 3166 as well. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
