The fact that there are almost a dozen different (and in many cases
horribly broken) encoding formats that are required now to implement
an email client/web browser is not a real problem?
of course it's a real problem. but adding more encoding formats doesn't
reduce that problem. nor does handwaving about the additional
complexity involved in doing so.
The fact that messages floating around often have to go through
transformation after transformation, encoding after encoding, just to
get from one place to another, and that*any* bugs or gaps with
encoding along the way result in real breakage?
uh, no they don't. and if they are implemented that way, the
implementations are broken.
The fact that because of typical desgin-by-committee and
generational effects we now have a series of protocols layered on top
of each other that are horribly complex, vague, and broken?
and exactly how is one person (who hasn't bothered to look into the
details, and who couldn't get consensus on a proposal to save his life),
specifying a different and incompatible way to do the same thing
going to help this situation?
And the fact that the vast majority of these problems would be solved
simply by having the balls to once and for all say "we shalt
transition all this shit to UTF-8"?
nope, that's bullshit. or at best, wishful thinking.
Keith