1. 11 th INIS/ETDE Joint Technical Committee Meeting Agenda Item 2.4 Special Characters Debbie Cutler, ETDE OA 6-8 November 2007 Vienna, Austria

2. IAEA/INIS 11 th JTC Agenda Item 2.4  Current special characters extend ASCII, but are limited:  #, _, and “ used as signal characters  Superscripts and subscripts  Greek letters and some mathematical symbols  Transliteration tables, too, plus recent use of @  Current systems for input, output, display and searching handle these for both INIS and ETDE

3. IAEA/INIS 11 th JTC Agenda Item 2.4 (cont.)  ISO 2709 exchange format is main limiting factor  XML offers greater possibilities for character sets  Previous meetings suggested a subgroup be established to discuss possibilities, once XML was closer to implementation  Unicode, UTF-8, MathML (definitions in papers) – views on what is realistic?

4. IAEA/INIS 11 th JTC Agenda Item 2.4 (cont.)  Aspects/implications that need to be considered:  Input (input tool capability, inputter’s capability, country-specific input tools, data from publishers)  Data transfer and processing  Output  Displaying in products  Searching in products  Storing

5. IAEA/INIS 11 th JTC Agenda Item 2.4 (cont.) Discussion/Questions  What are members’ views/experiences regarding these issues and what is realistically achievable for special characters within INIS/ETDE systems?  How should INIS and ETDE proceed with regard to addressing next steps for an enhanced set of special characters?