X3J13 Character Subcommittee formation

[Thom Linden <baggins@ibm.com>]

  The X3J13 committee would like to acknowledge and applaud the efforts
of the JEIDA Kanji WG.  The proposal for multi-byte character extensions
presented by Shiota-san at the X3J13 June meeting in Boston, was
so well received it instigated the creation of a new subcommittee!

  The subcommittee members are:
         Thom Linden,chair (IBM Research)
         Larry Masinter (XEROX Research)
         Carl Hoffman (International Lisp Associates)
         Bob Kerns (Symbolics)
         Duncan Missimer (Hewlett-Packard)
         Dave Matthews (Hewlett-Packard)
         Mike Beckerle (Gold Hill)

  Though our subcommittee will deal with various topics relating to
Common Lisp character support, the primary current topic will be
extensions to support the varied and multiple native character
sets.  In particular, Common Lisp should be able to support
Kanji, Hanja, Hanzi, Chinese, German, French, etc. monolingual and
multilingual applications.

  We have established a network distribution point for our subcommittee
discussions: <cl-natural-languages@sail.stanford.edu>.  Correspondence
from JEIDA and ISO on this subject area is invited.

  We look forward to working with the newly formed JEIDA and ISO
committees on a language design which is supportive of the
international community requirements and which provides
for a consistency across varied implementations and machine
architectures in the spirit of CLtL.