An update regarding SignWriting and Unicode

[Steve Slevinski]

Greetings SignWriting List,

Encouraging news regarding SignWriting and Unicode.

 From Wikipedia: Unicode is a computing industry standard for the 
consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in 
most of the world's writing systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode

There are many reasons and benefits why SignWriting should want to be 
part of this standard.

There are 2 governing committees for the Unicode standard: UTC and WG2.  
Both committees must approve any proposal before it becomes part of the 
Unicode standard.  Michael Everson presented to both committees this year.

Last month, Michael Everson presented to the UTC.  He received some 
valuable feedback and updated the proposal accordingly.

This month, Michael Everson presented to the WG2.  You can find the 
proposal document online:
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4090.pdf

The WG2 presentation went very well indeed.  He was given a great deal 
of time to present and discuss the proposal.  He had many very good 
questions from technical experts.  The discussion continued after the 
meeting and into dinner. He said that everyone was really positive and 
supportive regarding the proposal.

The committees meet twice a year: the next UTC meeting is in January 
2012 and the WG2 in February 2012.
We are hoping to be included on the ballot after the next meetings.  We 
are not on the ballot this time because the committees felt they needed 
time for a comprehensive review.

This is a great step forward.  As Michael said, "We can be very pleased 
indeed."

Regards,
-Steve