D J Bernstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Actually, there's very little opposition (especially among implementors) > to requiring all MTAs, MUAs, etc. to handle UTF-8 messages. Eventually > we will all be using UTF-8; all relevant bugs must be fixed. Only the > wildest ``7 bits forever!'' proponents, such as Keith Moore, disagree.
> The real controversy is over whether we should also do _other_ things > before UTF-8 is working everywhere. For example, should we introduce > some ad-hoc 7-bit character encoding for newsgroup names? > Many of us (especially implementors) believe that these short-term 7-bit > kludges have huge costs (as illustrated by your message) and miniscule > benefits. We believe that the 7-bit kludges should be dropped. > Our opponents are claiming that the IESG will demand a 7-bit solution. > But they aren't opposing the requirement of UTF-8 support; they're > opposing the reliance on UTF-8 as the sole solution. I'm not sure that I agree with your summary of the positions, but I'm certainly sympathetic to this viewpoint. Just implementing UTF-8 feels a lot cleaner to me too. However, my main interest personally is to get something published by the IETF documenting the Usenet article format that isn't as horribly obsolete and out of date as RFC 1036 is. I'm also most definitely not a mail system implementor or an IMAP implementor and don't know what issues implementors in those areas face. One additional option that I didn't mention would be to decide that the IETF standards process is out of touch with the reality of what implementors want and to then simply punt on specifying a non-ASCII encoding for newsgroups in the standard (so as not to get dragged into these arguments) and encourage anyone who wants to use a non-ASCII character set in practice to use UTF-8. This will work for most news server software. I personally don't have a sufficient grasp on the issues facing news client implementors, IMAP implementors, or mail system implementors to know whether that's a viable solution outside of news, and if so, whether it's the best solution available. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
