Dave Crocker writes:
However, the document specifically provides for support of additional
character sets, through separate registration with the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Hence, anyone may register the
name of character set, given a specification for it, and anyone may
also pursue standardization of the specification, separately.
Yes, that is true, but that does not give use mandatory minimal
support for this EUnet standard. That is, conforming MIME applications
may chose to reject standard EUnet mail. We are very much opposed
to this lack of interoperability. Minimal support for MNEMONIC
is simple: just display it as ASCII.
Along with EUNet's vigorous support for MNemonic, there is other
vigorous support for 10646, for Unicode, and for ISO 2022. We have
chosen to have MIME make explicit reference only to the minimum of
extremely well-established and heavily-used specifications, since
the current flurry of character-set related standards activities has
not yet produced a clear winner.
Some differences between MNEMONIC and the other proposals are:
1. there are well defined Internet specs for MNEMONIC, with
ID specifications being very stable for more than a year now.
2. Minimal support for MNEMONIC is very simple: treat it as ASCII.
3. products following the spec has been in production use for more
than 2 years (iso-2022-jp has this quality too).
4. It is the only spec that preserves interoperability of internet mail,
in fact MIME destroys internet interoperability.
5. It is adopted by a large internet community (EUnet) as its standard.
(iso-2022-jp also has this quality).
Hence, it seems to me that MNemonic should be pursued through the
standards process, if you wish, but on its own merits, rather than
being tied to an electronic mail format standard. Further, direct
use of MNemonic, within MIME messages, is not prevented by the MIME
specifications. The IETF process usually involves the (painful)
identification and separation of those items with (almost) universal
agreement, from those that are more controversial and in need of
specific focus and discussion. The entire topic of character sets
has proved to be just such a difficult area.
The specification in the IDs for MNEMONIC is now structured so
that it can be used in other internet memos, than MIME.
The MNEMONIC spec is applied in EUnet mail for more than 2 years,
thus asking for codification of this usage in the internet community.
So, again, I would appreciate understanding EUNet's reasons for
insisting the MNemonic be tied to MIME.
I hope that I, again, have made our position clear.
Please do not hesitate to contact me, if you have further questions
on this matter.
Best regards,
Keld Simonsen