I don't know anything about character sets. I have no opinion about
the solutions to any of the problems being discussed. I haven't even
been tracking them.
As usual, however, I have a comment on process:
---- Included message:
If you seriously want to know how Japanese should be processed on the
Internet, ask your question in Japanese language to people in Japan.
Not all the people in the world can use English.
"fj.kanji" is the appropriate news group.
The IETF does two things to try to ensure that its solutions are
appropriate for the end-user community. The first is to conduct its
business in an open manner, inviting anyone and everyone to
participate. To this in, those with an interest and with knowledge
need to assert themselves and come forward while the working group (or
the 'active group') is doing their development.
The second is to make our work available for review, prior to
standardization. Our assumption is that serious and deep review is
conducted during development, but a final round of review also can be
helpful.
Hence, I suggest two actions, if they have not already been taken:
1. Formulate specific proposals. Whoever thinks they know the answer
or answers to this problem need to write them down as an approximate
specification, if they haven't already. (By "approximate" I mean that
it does not have to be ready for publication, but should describe all
of the essential features of the solution being proposed.) Circulate
those proposals before any and all bodies that are believed to be
appropriate, inside or outside of the IETF.
It is one thing to talk about solutions and another thing to specify
them. The IETF works with specs.
2. Circulate an "announcement" of the IETF activity to any and all
groups that are deemed relevant and appropriate, inviting them to
participate in the IETF discussion.
Please note that neither of these suggestions entails conductiing a
discussion on a a non-IETF mailing list. (I happen to believe that
the current 822 list is entirely inappropriate, at this point, but
I don't care much whether the discussion is on this list, ietf-charsets,
or whatever, as long as it is run along IETF rules and style.) My
suggestion only is to use the "other" lists for announcing this
activity.
Dave
d/