ietf-822
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Re: RFC 2047 and gatewaying

2003-01-09 12:43:49

In a world that makes any use of RFC 2047, displaying text correctly
means identifying the locations where RFC 2047 encoding is used. (Never
mind all the other complications in RFC 2047.) The definition of those
locations is extremely complicated---so complicated that, in practice,
nobody gets it right.

Even worse, the definition is unstable. Consider a mail client that does
a perfect job of decoding RFC 2047 in mail messages today. As soon as
some nitwit defines and deploys a new header field using the RFC 2047
encoding, that mail client will start displaying messages incorrectly.
This is the design flaw under discussion.

The crucial advantage of UTF-8 is that it will be used _everywhere_. The
correct display algorithm is simple and stable.

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago

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