Thanks for the update, Simon -- it's a useful collection/naming of the alphabets in use.
However, I notice that you haven't listed a Base32 alphabet that was proposed in a number of the internationalized-domain-name (IDN) ascii-compatible-encoding (ACE) drafts. This alphabet is the "Canonical" alphabet, without the letters 'L' and 'O' -- thus reaching '8' and '9' at the end. Though not adopted by the IDN efforts, this alphabet struck me as the most sensible choice for identifiers which might be human transcibed, in whole or in fragments, and so my company is using it in our current system. There's still time for us to change without too much pain, and I'm more interested in global convergence on a preferred alphabet, than any tiny advantages one or the other has. So, what I'd really like is a clear statement in your draft that a particular alphabet is "preferred" for future protocol work, and that "Base32", when used alone, should be presumed to mean a particular alphabet. Terming one alphabet the "Canonical" alphabet almost does the trick; an explicit statement that IETF documents are presumed to use this alphabet would be even better. One other comment: Since people often search for "Base32" and "Base64" (no spaces), it would be helpful for these tokens to appear in the draft/RFC text as well, to make sure it comes up in search results. - Gordon ____________________ Gordon Mohr, gojomo@ bitzi.com, Bitzi CTO _ http://bitzi.com _ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Simon Josefsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Gordon Mohr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 11:02 AM Subject: Re: Favored Base32 Alphabet? > "Gordon Mohr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > There are multiple Base32 alphabets floating about > > in Internet-Drafts. For example, > ... > > This discussion contained some good points, I hope the updates version > of this document includes them. In particular, I've added a "URL and > Filename safe" base64 alphabet, which seem to be used in certain > places. Comments welcome, my hope is to send this off to the IESG > secretariat, to request RFC publication, before the end of the year > (unless I hear something regarding the not-yet-formed SASL WG, which > have expressed interest). > > http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-josefsson-base-encoding-03.txt > >
