On Mon, 23 Sep 91 12:47:45 EDT,
atkinson(_at_)itd(_dot_)nrl(_dot_)navy(_dot_)mil wrote:
2. Some (many ?) Japanese users are commonly using ISO 2022-derived
schemes already and would like to be able to continue using them.
Additionally, the Japanese users could also use ISO 2022 if they feel the
need by defining locally some identifier for their use of ISO 2022
mechanisms (without that identifier or mechanism being something that
RFC-XXXX needs to define or address).
ISO 2022 is used throughout the Japanese e-mail infrastructure. No amount of
techno-degreeing by a bunch of gaijin will change that. It's 7-bit clean and
concurrently supports US ASCII and JIS (which also contains the Roman and
Greek alphabets).
There is no reason to believe that there is any benefit gained in Japan by
using quoted-printable or mnemonic. If the recipient has an incompetant
terminal that can't display Japanese, romanization is an acceptable (albeit
not more desirable) fall-back crutch.
I find it ironic that the Japanese can figure out with thousands of characters
how to be 7-bit clean while the Europeans with only a couple of dozen non-
USASCII characters to worry about at most can't.