Specifically, this Working Group has been asked to recommend
"Character Mnemonics & Character Sets"
<draft-ietf-822ext-charsets-04.txt> as an informational document
At first glance, this does not seem to be problematic. But what,
exactly, does it mean for this 822ext WG to "recommend" this draft as
an "informational document"?
Does it mean that the WG says to IESG:
"This WG has reached a consensus that the [draft] contains accurate
information, and recommends that it be published as such."
Or do we say that the author believes it to be accurate, and that the
WG simply wants it published as a take-it-or-leave-it informational
RFC that may or may not be accurate?
"Mnemonic Character Sets" <draft-ietf-822ext-mnemonics-03.txt>
describes how to use the mnemonics and character sets tabled in the
above document as a character set. It is intended to register this
mechanism with IANA as a character set for use in MIME.
In order to get the IESG to approve MIME, the WG had to delete
references to documents that were incomplete or were not standards. Is
there an analogous requirement for MIME charsets, where the IANA
cannot register a charset if the document contains references to
incomplete or non-standard documents? If so, wouldn't the reference to
the above "charsets-04" document have to be deleted from the
"mnemonics" document?
Would we have to go through all of this hassle if Keld simply proposed
the "mnemonics" document as an experimental protocol? Why don't we
give it a name starting with "X-" and then get some people to use it
for a while, iron out any remaining bugs in the specs, find out which
particular characters are being used with the spec, and then moving
parts of the specs to "standard" status when it seems appropriate?
I.e. the Internet way?
Erik