< Just to dip a last toe into hot water:
<
< We're pretty clear now that using anything but ASCII with FTP requires
< changes to the FTP protocol, no matter what people have running now.
<
< The other discussion was with access-type=local-file.
<
< As far as I remember, one reason for deferring this altogether was when
< one of the persons present realized that:
<
< When an NFS server using the "C" locale exports a disk to an NFS client
< using the "EUC" (Japanese) locale, or vice versa, the problem of how to
< interpret the filenames correctly is NOT SOLVED. (Remember that NFS is a
< stateless protocol passing no environment information....)
<
< So, until at least *one* underlying technology catches up with the
< problem, it seems safe to defer it.
A few points:
NFS is irrelevent to the problem. Servers don't "use" locales. Client
machines don't "use" locales. (And EUC is not Japanese. EUC is a
mechanism to support multiple character sets simultaneously. It is
commonly used by many Japanese users, as well as many non-Japanese
users.)
People use locales. They create filenames in their locale, and they can
change locales. Other people on the same machine can be using a different
locale. Or they can be logged onto another machine connected over a network
to that machine, and using a different locale there.
Consider what happens if I create a filename while in a Japanese EUC locale.
If I then switch to the "C" locale, or to a German/English/French EUC
locale, the filename will not have changed, but it will certainly look
strange when displayed on my terminal. If someone else running in a
different locale looks at my files, the name will look strange there as
well.
This is why I gave the example using an unknown character set:
Content-Type: Message/External-body;
filename="=?unknown?Q?/usr/spool/xyz/ne=3d=3cfoo?"
The locale and character set of the filename is actually irrelevant to all
of this discussion. What is needed is to be able to pass a filename to the
system that will be recognized on that system. This only requires a way of
specifying an 8-bit quantity to be passed over a 7-bit wire, and the rfc
1342 mechanism does just fine for doing that.
Tony Hansen
hansen(_at_)pegasus(_dot_)att(_dot_)com,
tony(_at_)attmail(_dot_)com
att!pegasus!hansen, attmail!tony