Greg,
As I have said for some time now and backed myself up in fairly
clear technical terms, the document "draft-ietf-822ext-mnemonics.txt"
has significant technical flaws that make its use outside of European
alphabetic languages inappropriate in its present form.
Even alphabetic Asian languages, such as Vietnamese, are not well
served or equitably treated by this document and its author Keld
Simonsen has explicitly rejected my specific proposals to change it so
that it would treat at least all alphabetic languages on equal terms.
I think that it would be fine as an experimental protocol or as an
informational document, possibly with a registered type with the IANA.
I strongly oppose any and all attempts to put it on the standards
track until the author makes the changes that I and others have
outlined that are necessary to treat all alphabetic languages on an
even basis and to permit multiple character set profiles to work using
the same mechanism.
I think that the document "draft-ietf-822ext-charsets-*.txt" would
be very useful as an informational document and ery much hope that it
will be published informationally. It does not contain standards
track material and is not suitable for the standards track, and I
oppose any effort that might be made to put it on the standards track.
I've said all of this repeatedly to the 822 Extensions list and all
on the list are well aware of my views and the technical and
linguistic bases for those views, which level of detail I omit at
present for brevity.
Randall Atkinson
atkinson(_at_)itd(_dot_)nrl(_dot_)navy(_dot_)mil