Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 11-Nov-91 Re: NETF and EUnet on mnemo..
Dave Crocker(_at_)pa(_dot_)dec(_dot_)com (1189)
It is very, very difficult to back off from important topics, but
responsible project management requires doing just that, if staying with
a topic is likely to threaten the entire project. For RFC XXXX, I
believe it is absolutely essential to back off from all aspects of
the characterset/language issues, except for providing the basic
extensibility mechanism that will allow later specs a point of
'entry'.
This sounds very appealing to me. I went into this process knowing
nearly nothing about character sets, and though I have learned a great
deal about them, I am unconvinced that the world is ready to specify
character sets properly. XXXX should probably provide a good hook on
which to hang character set information, and little or nothing more. I
was already moving that way with the "AUTHORS' POSITIONS" on 2022,
10646, etc., and I'm happy to go along with Dave in applying it to the
separation of the Moore/headers proposal as well.