ietf-822
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Re: SWEDISH CHARACTERS IN EMAIL: THE SUNET INITIATIVE

1994-11-17 06:06:30
Certainly. MIME charset mechanism is good to identify multiple
localizations. But, if one decides to use 8bit Latin-1 only, a
single localization, he does not need charset specification.

I think this is the heart of your misunderstanding, Ohta-san.  You're
thinking about "localizations".

No, not at all. I'm thinking about THE internationalization.

 In a sense, you're right that you don't
need MIME if you only have "a single localization", whatever that means.

Sure.

 The whole point of MIME's character set facilities, however, was not
"localization" but "globalization" -- making email intelligible
everywhere, regardless of geographic or linguistic issues.

And do so in a single message, which is unrelated to MIME.

Thus, MIME is unrelated to globalization/internationalization.

I have had the privilege, in research labs in the US,

That's merely the DISADVANTAGE to collect the *REAL* experience
on THE INTERNATIONALIZATION.

of working with
people from Japan, India, various European countries, and other parts of
the world.

In which langauge, you can commnicate with others?

I shall not accept the answer "English".

Some of them have had to struggle mightily in order to
master the English they have to use in daily life.  Why shouldn't they

"shouldn't they"? Who are they? There are a lot lot lot lot more
general public who just don't understand English so well.

be able to seamlessly slip back into their native tongue when they sit
down to send email to the folks back home?

No one prohitted to do so.

For that to work, from a US
machine, you don't need localization, you need globalization.

OK. I don't mind if you prefer the word "globaliization" than
"internationalization". But I don't think you understand what
they mean.

And then
you need to be able to specify/identify the character set, which is the
main facility MIME provides in this regard.  -- Nathaniel

Not at all. You are thinking only about text with a
single localized charset, which is totally unrelated to
globaliization/internationalization, where single text may
contain all the charactters in the world.

That's a simple misunderstanding TOO commonly found within native
Latin alpabet users.

                                                Masataka Ohta