ietf-822
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Re: RFC 2047 and gatewaying

2003-01-12 20:12:26

In <3E1F2AAC(_dot_)1000408(_at_)Sonietta(_dot_)blilly(_dot_)com> Bruce Lilly 
<blilly(_at_)erols(_dot_)com> writes:

D. J. Bernstein wrote:

Specifying ``UTF-8 everywhere'' removes the need to add charset tags to
individual pieces of data. The message writer converts the local charset
to UTF-8 and then discards the local charset information.

That would only work if it could be absolutely guaranteed that no untagged
data in any other character set might appear.  No such guarantee is possible,
and in fact Usenet abounds with untagged charsets, of which, according to
Andrew Gierth, "no significant amount" is utf-8.

Not so. Untagged data in "any other" charset would be non-compliant with
the standard, so the standard is not obliged to cater for that case
(however, Usefor does provide a _suggested_ way out which, if followed,
will result in nothing worse that the present unsatisfactory state of
affairs).

Having said that, if someone can propose a tagging scheme for such headers
(and that might well include language tags), then there is no reason why
Usefor could not consider it. I see many technical problems, but they
could be discussed.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl(_at_)clw(_dot_)cs(_dot_)man(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk      Snail: 5 
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