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". In a sense, you're right that you don't
need MIME if you only have "a single localization", whatever that means.
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.
The heart of your misundersntanding is, it seems to me, that multiple
localizations is the globalization. It is not.
Supporting messages in ISO-2022-JP only and/or ISO-2022-KR only is
merely supporting two localizations and is not the way toward the
internationalization. Supporting mixed ISO-2022-JP/-KR encoding
in a single message is the way toward the internationalization.
Charset is a sort of LOCALE, that is, a thing tot diistinguish
different localizations. That' all.
I have had the privilege, in research labs in the US, of working with
people from Japan, India, various European countries, and other parts of
the world. Some of them have had to struggle mightily in order to
master the English they have to use in daily life.
So, from your environment, it is natural if you wrongly think
supporting English-Japanese, English-Indean, English-Euro and
English-other-parts-of-the-world environment is the Internationalizaion,
which is arrogant, insulting and narrow-sighted US centric view.
What we need is, an environment where English-Japanese-Euro-other-parts-
of-the-world is supported at the same time.
Why shouldn't they
be able to seamlessly slip back into their native tongue when they sit
down to send email to the folks back home?
Your question is US-centric and wrong. "Why shouldn't they use
English when they communicate?" is the proper question, and the
answer is "No, Japanese and Indean may communicate using mixed
French and Korean languages".
Masataka Ohta