ietf-822
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: non-ASCII in headers

1991-09-30 10:00:46
From: "Ned Freed, Postmaster" <NED(_at_)hmcvax(_dot_)claremont(_dot_)edu>

John Klensin writes:

(1) While they have been quiet, and polite, and really continue to be, I 
think there is now a clear message that something has to be done about
non-ASCII in headers in *this* version of RFC-XXXX.  Frankly, I would
have raised the issue but for a few things: I been preoccupied with some
transport issues and some things unrelated to mail; I've been hoping
that the silent minority would speak up because their articulating their
own positions is, IMHO, critical to the overall success of this effort; 
and, ultimately, I don't need non-English characters in the headers of 
very many of the messages I write.  Not zero, just not very many.

I disagree. I think the only compelling reason that this material would
have to be addressed specifically in RFC-XXXX would be that it is not
orthogonal to the issues addressed by RFC-XXXX. Nobody has yet
demonstrated that it is not orthogonal. In fact, given the
extensibility of RFC-XXXX there is every reason to think it would be
orthogonal.

I think there is another reason to deal with this in RFC-XXXX (or, at
least at the same time as we issue RFC-XXXX, which comes down to just
about the same thing): This release is trying to standardize character
sets in messages, and an essential element of this standardization is
to handle the character sets in headers too.  I know for a fact that
being able to put localized characters in the header lines is extremely
important to our customers.  In asia, we've been doing it with seven
bit ISO2022 encodings of the local EUC character sets.  I would hope
that we could continue to do this while using RFC-XXXX.  If RFC-XXXX
doesn't allow this, I would expect to have some very upset customers.

To me, this is the key point: if you are going to try and standardize
chararacter sets, solve the problem (not just half of the problem).


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>