**** WARNING -- The following message is full of direct and candid
statements of facts. As such, it might be interpreted by some as an
extremely angry flame against Ohta-san.
Excerpts from mail: 21-Nov-94 Re: Internationalization of.. Masataka
Ohta(_at_)necom830(_dot_)c (1978)
Read RFC 822 again. We have designed ISO-2022-JP, which is NOT US-ASCII,
10 years ago with full understanding on RFC 822.
Well, I've just read the relevant sections again -- not that I didn't
have anything better to do with my time, but on the off-chance that you
might have a CLUE what you are talking about -- and while, like Keith, I
have no criticism of ISO-2022-JP, it is clearly out-of-spec with regard
to 822, which was designed to support ONLY mail in the ASCII character
set. ISO-2022-JP provides an encoding of Japanese in ASCII, but that
does not make it ASCII text.
Not [relevant] to the MIME standardization issue, agreed. So, remove
overwordings of MIME.
All that the MIME spec says is how a MIME-compliant reader should
interpret the semantics of pre-MIME messages. This is entirely within
the scope of MIME.
You need some real world experience to use non-ASCII environment
daily.
People have been doing localizaion within the spec of RFC 822.
You need some lessons in humility. How DARE you tell me what kind of
experience I need? Do you know my history? Do you know how often I
correspond with people in non-English languages, or how much time I've
lived in non-English speaking countries? Obviously not. With every
message you send, you make your ignorance and arrogance more obvious.
For several years now, I have strongly resisted the temptation to make
similarly negative assumptions about YOUR experience with email
technology, which certainly gives every appearance of being limited to
reading mail without understanding it and sending mail without thinking
about it. I sincerely wish you would just get off this list and never
darken our door again.
Long-time readers of this list will know that in over four years of
MIME-related discussions, this is the first time I have EVER expressed
anything other than a desire for every interested person to participate
in these discussions. There were some irrational and annoying people
involved in the MIME discussions from a very early date, and I always
struggled to be polite to them. You, sir, have overstepped the
boundaries of reasonableness so often that I am finally convinced that
you have either no real comprehension of the underlying technologies or
no real desire to be constructive. I have better things to do with my
time than answer you, and I will follow Dave Crocker's lead and try to
simply ignore you from now on.
If I were you, I would take a moment to reflect soberly on the following
fact: You have now managed to present your case (if you have one) so
incompetently, and so offensively, that both the author of RFC 822 and
an author of MIME have decided that you are simply not worth listening
to any more. I don't know about Dave, but this is the first time I have
EVER taken such a public position with regard to ANYONE. I know you'll
think we're just being wrongheaded, but maybe, just maybe, you should
consider the possibility that your attitude and your arguments have
played some small role in our reaching this conclusion.
I will say, however, that you have performed one important public
service by helping to disprove a stereotype. In my opinion,
stereotypes are a bad thing, even when they are positive. I get very
uncomfortable, for example, whenever I hear someone talking about how
clever Jewish people are, even though such statements are often intended
as a compliment. You are to be commended for having struck a mighty
blow against the common stereotype of Japanese people as being extremely
courteous and polite. I'm sure that no reader of this mailing list will
ever hear of that stereotype again without thinking of you.
and were an important reason why MIME was designed in the
first place! -- Nathaniel
And failed.
Well, if MIME is a failure and ISO-2022-INT is a success, I'll choose
failure any day. And I'll wish you much success in all your future
endeavors. But clearly, the overwhelming success of ISO-2022-INT has
earned it a mailing list of its own. Why don't you set one up and leave
this mailing list for us poor confused souls who still think MIME is
worth talking about? If you don't know how to set up a mailing list,
I'm sure that at least one of the many supporters of ISO-2022-INT will
be happy to help you do so.
Otherwise, I fear that in the future, when the Internet standards
process has stopped being open to anyone who wishes to participate, the
rule that defines how people can be excluded from participating will be
known as "The Ohta-san Rule". Is that how you want to be immortalized?
-- Nathaniel