Mark Crispin writes:
I think it is the height of arrogance and folly for Americans to `specify'
what ISO-2022 usage is for Japan, Red China, the Republic of Korea, north
Korea, and Taiwan.
OK, Mark, if it is the height of arrogance to specify usage in any way, why
should we presume to deal with it at all? Since everything we've attempted to
do is "arrogant" (and inflammatories aside, I assume it must also be incorrect
in some way) why must we do anything to deal with this usage?
The most that should be done is to document what appears to be current
practice, with clear statements that this is *all* that this document is and
*not* an attempt at a specification.
We're in the business of producing a specification, not a bunch of hand-waving.
We have three possible choices here:
(1) Give this usage a name and specify it.
(2) Give this usage a name and say that a companion document will specify it.
(3) Punt and don't deal with this at all.
I am not willing to accept:
(4) Give this usage a name, don't specify it and don't plan to have a document
specifying it.
My reason for finding (4) to be unacceptable is simple -- I have software that
has to support this stuff, and without a specification I cannot do so. I
currently support conversion of the Japanese 2022 usage to/from the character
set people use on the hardware I run on. Will this new usage be the same thing?
How can I be sure without a (shudder) specification? I had a specification
(specifically, code that was known to work) to work from before. What do I have
now?
I hear Neil offering to help with either (1) or (2). This sounds good to me!
Apart from the fact that he's caucasian (actually an assumption on my part --
he doesn't look oriental to me) and works for an American company, what's the
problem with his coordinating this specification? He appears to have the
necessary industry contacts to obtain this information. I certainly don't have
the necessary contacts to do this.
You should feel free to jump in and criticize whatever specification
materializes from this work. However, such criticism had better be on based on
merit rather than on the basis of who happens to have done the work.
It would be nice if we could get some people involved with this work that you
would be happier with. But since only you know who these people are, why not
ask them to get involved yourself?
Ned