ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 Coded character sets is a standardization subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), that develops and facilitates standards within the field of coded character sets. The international secretariat of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 is the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee (JISC), located in Japan.^[1]

History

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 was established in 1987, originally with the title “Character Sets and Information Coding,” with the area of work being, “the standardization of bit and byte coded representation of information for interchange including among others, sets of graphic characters, of control functions, of picture elements and audio information coding of text for processing and interchange; code extension techniques; implementation of these coded representations on interchange media and transmission systems."^[2] The standardization activities of the subcommittee were originally under the jurisdiction of ISO/TC 97. However, when the Joint Technical Committee, ISO/IEC JTC 1, was established in 1987 as a merger between ISO/TC 97, Information Technology, and IEC/TC 83, the standardization activity was transferred to the new subcommittee, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2. Certain standards that are now under the jurisdiction of the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2, such as ISO/IEC 646, were published before the creation of ISO/IEC JTC 1, under ISO/TC 97.^[3] The original working groups of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 were: WG 1 “Code Extension Techniques,” WG 2 “Multiple-octet Coded character set,” WG 3 “7-bit and 8-bit Codes,” WG 6 “Control Functions,” and WG 8 “Coded Representation of Picture and Audio Information.” Since then, the subcommittee has established or disbanded working groups in response to changing standardization needs within the field of coded character sets.^[2]

Scope and mission

The scope of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 is the “Standardization of graphic character sets and their characteristics, including:”^[4]

• String ordering
• Associated control functions and their coded representation for information interchange
• Code extension techniques

The scope of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 does not include audio and picture coding.

Structure

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 has one active working group (WG) which carries out specific tasks in standards development within the field of coded character sets. The focus of this WG is described in the group’s terms of reference. The one active WG of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 is:^[2][4][5][1]

Working Group/Other Working Group	Working Area
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2	Universal coded character set

The discontinuation of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/OWG-SORT was unanimously approved by resolution at the 2014 plenary meeting of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2. The project, ISO/IEC 14651, which was allocated to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/OWG-SORT is now handled directly under ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2.^[6]

Collaborations

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 works in close collaboration with a number of other organizations or subcommittees, both internal and external to ISO or IEC. Organizations internal to ISO or IEC that collaborate with or are in liaison to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 include:^[5][1]

• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22, Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29, Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information
• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, Document description and processing languages
• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 35, User interfaces
• ISO/TC 37/SC 2, Terminographical and lexicographical working methods
• ISO/TC 46/SC 4, Technical interoperability
• ISO/TC 211, Geographic information/Geomatics
• ISO/TC 215, Health informatics

Some organizations external to ISO or IEC that collaborate with or are in liaison to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 include:

• Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS)
• Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)/Internet Society (ISOC)
• International Telecommunication Union - Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T)
• Commission of European Communities (EC|CEC)
• United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
• United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN-ECE)
• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
• World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
• Taipei Computer Association (TCA)
• UC Berkeley
• UNICODE
• W3C

Member countries

Countries pay a fee to ISO to be members of subcommittees.^[7]

The 27 "P" (participating) members of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 are: Austria, Canada, China, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Republic of Korea, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, Poland, Russian Federation, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and United States of America.

The 22 "O" (observing) members of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 are: Armenia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cuba, Czech Republic, Estonia, Ghana, Hong Kong, Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Morocco, Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, and Viet Nam.^[8]

Published standards

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 has published 55 ISO standards within the field of Coded Character Sets, including:^[1]

ISO/IEC Standard	Title	Status	Description	WG/OWG
ISO/IEC 646	Information technology – ISO 7-bit coded character set for information interchange	Published (1991)	Specifies a set of basic graphic characters and their coded representations through the use of a 7-bit character code[9]	3 (Disbanded)
ISO/IEC 2022	Information technology – Character code structure and extension techniques	Published (1994)	Specifies:[10] a technique for including multiple character sets in a single character encoding system, and a technique for representing these character sets in both 7 and 8 bit systems using the same encoding	3 (Disbanded)
ISO/IEC 6429	Information technology – Control functions for coded character sets	Published (1992)	“Includes control functions and their coded representations for a 7-bit code, an extended 7-bit code, an 8-bit code or an extended 8-bit code”[11]	3 (Disbanded)
ISO/IEC 8859-1	Information technology – 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets – Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1	Published (1998)	Specifies a set of up to 191 graphic characters and their coded representations through the use of a single 8-bit byte[12]	3 (Disbanded)
ISO/IEC 10646	Information technology – Universal Coded Character Set (UCS)	Published (2014)	Specifies the Universal Character Set (UCS), and is applicable to the representation, transmission, interchange, processing, storage, input, and presentation of the written form of the languages of the world, as well as additional symbols[13][14]	2
ISO/IEC 14651	Information technology – International string ordering and comparison – Method for comparing character strings and description of the common template tailorable ordering	Published (2016)	Defines:[15] A reference comparison method A Common Template Table A reference name Requirements for the declaration of the differences between the collation table and the Common Template Table	OWG-SORT (Disbanded)

Standards under development within ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 include amendments to the ISO/IEC 10646 standard (covered by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2) and amendments to the ISO/IEC 14651 standard (covered by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2).

See also

• ISO/IEC JTC1
• List of ISO standards
• Japanese Industrial Standards Committee
• International Organization for Standardization
• International Electrotechnical Commission