Have a look at Rolf's post (and Wouter's follow-up). A conformant sail will probably fit inside F16, but it is likely that a sail fully optimised for these specs will not be fully optimised for F16. The problem is that the proposed rules (like the F16 rules) do not describe a particular sail, they describe a set of restrictions within which a sailmaker can create a sail. From what Rolf and Wouter say, it seems likely that a sail fitting the new Taipan rules would also fit within the F16 rules, but I think it's rather less likely that the reverse would be true.

The Taipan rules are more restrictive than the F16 ones, and I only hope that the reason they are considering a different ruleset is because they believe that it will lead to less variation in sails and thus performance (a reasonable aim in a OD class), rather than out of a desire to be different from F16 due to historical differences...

Paul