o Review of content-language, content-disposition, and content-MIC
header fields for incorporation in a companion document to MIME.
...
Note: Not included on the agenda is a discussion of ISO 10646 and the
profiling of this work for MIME. If a written proposal for a MIME
character set of character sets is ready, and a Working Group review
...
Greg,
I'm a little concerned that the sequencing of things--the way the
agenda is set--may determine the outcome here. If I correctly
understand the discussions of the last few weeks, there is a controversy
between the use of separable information (a Content-language header or
an additional optional parameter that can be used whereever "charset" is
used) and binding language information to character set keywords.
If we agree on "Content-language:" or "language=", then the notion of
mandatory language-profiled character identification is dead--just not
enough marginal value given that we already have the other capabilities
and a considerable potential for interoperability-failure-producing
confusion.
Personally, I think that is the right outcome: every time I think
through the implications of 10646-x-y-z the more I'm convinced that
"Content-language:" or "language=" is the right model. But that
conclusion should be reached on a technical basis, not on the basis of
the organization of an agenda.
--john