Borka,
While I've mostly stayed out of this discussion so far because I
haven't had much signal to add to the noise, the WG-CHAR charter you
posted (which I hope is a draft for comment) really concerns me.
As long as the problem is couched as "European", then there are
certainly simple 16-bit solutions that will satisfy "everyone" and it may
be that, with a little head-knocking-together, a 8-bit solution is
possible (where "8-bit" implies something on the order of 190 to 222
graphic characters and "16-bit" implies something in the 64 K range).
As several other people have pointed out, if one community wants to
agree on a character set for use within that community, all it has to do
procedurally is to come up with a clear definition and register that
will IANA. And no one should have much objection to that other than
a general concern that fewer options (e.g., alternative character sets)
gives us better interoperability.
But the draft you posted uses the term "standard" several times. I
think that, at this stage in its development, it would not serve the
Internet community well to standardize on -- and start migrating toward --
anything that does not accomodate the vast majority of languages in use
(or likely to be in use in the near future) on the extended mail
internet.
Passion and flaming by various people aside, the difficult
discussions of the last few weeks probably point to something important
-- something that everyone who has tried seriously to work out
international character set issues in any forum knows by experience:
The problems involved are very hard, and people care deeply about
representations of their character sets that conform to their local
norms. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be faced, but it does mean that
careful listening and understanding is very important.
Can we either open this up to a worldwide solution or be very
specific about why you are looking for a "European" solution and think
that is appropriate?
--john