ietf-822
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Re: The transition to UTF-8 header fields

1999-02-09 06:33:53
I think if raw UTF-8 is going to be the eventual interpretation of headers
with 8th bits set in them (as opposed to treating it as iso-8859-1, which
people can get away with now) then there needs to be something said sooner
rather than later just in order to take possession of the high ground
before anyone else does. A few newsreaders that took the UTF-8
interpretation might work wonders just by setting the right precedents.

Yes, I agree with that.

But total lack of public pronouncement on the issue will just open the way
for iso-8859-1 to win by default.

Yes, I know there is presently no machinery for making such public
pronouncements ...

We probably could do some sort of public pronouncement, but I think that
such a pronouncement should probably be an Experimental protocol spec
for UTF-8 in email headers, not just a "we're going to migrate to 
UTF-8 someday" statement.  If we do the latter we risk people going
off and implementing UTF-8 in an ad-hoc fashion, and even greater
divergence of implementations than we have now.

Keith