Re: Problems with 8-bit transport
it is West-Euro-centric
% Rubbish. Fixing some code that allows only single byte 7-bit codes will
% apply equally to the processing of any multi-octet character set (such
% as Japanese JIS X0208). Encoding of Japanese can be done with two
% bytes of 8-bits fully encoded.
Japanese is NOT the only non-European language. Vietnamese and many
other languages also don't fit in 8 bits at present and don't have
shift states. The current 8 bit transport proposal will really only
help users of ISO 8859/X variants -- not ISO 10646 or other character
encodings.
it does not solve the general problem of international character sets
agreed.
%I agree, but it is the stepping stone (something functional vs nothing).
If one is going to add 8bit transport, one should really solve the
general problem and provide 8/16/32-bit transport and avoid
Euro-centrism and linguistic bias.
The current 8-bit transport effort is a political one by Europeans
who are rapidly migrating to ISO 8859/1 and don't understand that 7bit
transport will happily transmit ISO 8859/1 cleanly and correctly using
the RFC-XXXX extensions. I find it ironic that many of the people
decrying alleged US insensitivity to I18N concerns are themselves only
concerned with European languages and aren't trying to solve the
general problem at all.
it merely includes Western Europeans in the privileged class of those who
don't have to worry about the problem of international characters.
% Nonsense. It could be applied within enclaves of usage. Chances are that
% language (hence characters of that language) will not escape outside
% enclaves of usage. We just need the enclave rules defined.
Mark is right. No one has ever shown a clearly defined "enclave."
The word gets thrown around a lot, but I see no evidence that clearly
defined enclaves do or will exist. I am quite sure that there will be
regular escapes from such enclaves if they ever exist and that such
escapes WILL cause interoperability problems.
% The first reason is the technical reason; the others are moral reasons.
% Unlike some, I see nothing magic in 8-bit datums as opposed to 7-bit, 36-bit,
% 9-bit, 14-bit, 15-bit, etc. I don't think the limited benefits of 8-bit
% transport are worth the cost.
I don't think that trying to prohibit 8 bit transport will fly. The
result of not specifying something will be that people will implement
it anyway and ignore interoperability concerns. I do wish however
that the document that specifies the optional 8-bit transport would
also specify 16 and 32 bit transport. This would put all of the ISO
character set encodings on an equal footing and avoid the
political/racial/cultural bias so evident in an 8-bit-only proposal.
Unfortunately the technical requirements are clearly already being
controlled by political considerations.
Regards,
Randall Atkinson
atkinson(_at_)itd(_dot_)nrl(_dot_)navy(_dot_)mil (note new address)