CHARACTER SETS: This is, as we all know, a mess. I have tried
to effect a compromise between what I see as the two extremes
represented by Dave Crocker and Keld Simonsen. The new draft
removes the definition of the values "iso-10646" and "mnemonic",
but retains the 8859- family, US-ASCII, and ISO-2022-jp. I
think this makes a lot of sense as a "principled" solution to
this dilemma -- it retains only the character sets that are
already in use in email today, defining strings with which to
label that usage. The new draft adds some new prose about
"private" character set values, which must begin with "X-", and
refers the reader to RFC-CHAR for a discussion of what other
character sets there are and how to name them, i.e. as "X-foo"
where "foo" is defined in RFC-CHAR.
As said before, removing MNEMONIC is a SHOW STOPPER to me.
MNEMONIC is specified at the preferred mail exchange character set
by Nordunet and EUnet. Removing support for it in RFC-MIME will
not be a good service to these communities, which should be considered
as some of the main user communities of the enhanced character
set support of RFC-MIME.
MNEMONIC is already in use in email today, and has been in use
since February 1990. Actually the 8859-X series are not in organized
use in email today, as it has not been allowed.
The only support required for MNEMONIC is to treat it as US-ASCII.
That should not be very hard to specify nor implement.
Keld