I wish people would read messages before replying to them.
I *implemented* a system which allowed ISO-2022 kanji in the Subject line as
well as in the body. I was told, by the Japanese customer, not to bother
(*after* the code had been written and debugged) because they would never use
it.
You can not say that `everyone' in Japan wanted to be able to use Japanese
characters in Subject lines. I just gave you a counter-example. You yourself
admit that although your lab did so internally they were cautioned not to do
so if the mail was going outside the lab.
The only thing that is more disgusting than foreigners predicating their
arguments on a bogus assumption of an opponent's `American bias' is an
American predicating his argument on a bogus assumption of an opponent's
`American bias.'
The bias is INTEROPERABILITY. We will have this problem as long as most of
the mail programs in the world are in the dark ages and implement
`presentation to the user' as `output the text of the headers and body in
image form to the terminal'.
If anything, I would go further and ban usage in Subject lines of any
characters in US-ASCII that are used for other purposes in local character
sets.
How strict you need to go on this rule is a function of how important it is to
you that a recipient that is possibly in a foreign country is able to
comprehend your message.
The `rules' must take the most narrow interpretation. Locally, you can take a
more general interpretation.
I can read Japanese ISO-2022 on my screen. However, I recognize that the
reality is that over 99% of all terminals in use outside of Japan can not.
Unless we have rules -- even if widely violated -- one could take the position
that it is perfectly valid for Western-language messages to be in JIS instead
of ASCII and that any mailer in the US or Europe which can not read it are
BROKEN. Roman characters are in JIS. So are Greek characters.