On 14 Jan 2003 23:13:19 -0000
"D. J. Bernstein" <djb(_at_)cr(_dot_)yp(_dot_)to> wrote:
Keith Moore writes:
there will still be a need for canonicalization of certain fields
No. All text is already, at a minimum, C-normalized. Keyboard interfaces
get it right, and other programs don't randomly switch accent positions.
I don't share your confidence that this happens in every environment,
for every program that generates header fields.
Anyway, your hypothetical Unicode normalization problems would also
arise in normalizing RFC 2047, so you can't use normalization as an
argument against moving to UTF-8.
Which is precisely why 2047 was never intended for anything that needs
to be interpreted by machine.
Your ``sufficient testing through ordinary usage'' argument is equally
silly. Testing UTF-8 is much simpler than testing RFC 2047.
Your comparison is silly, because the two solve different problems;
and because for better or worse, the complexity associated with 2047
is going to be around for a long time anyway.
Keith