ietf-822
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Re: Upgrading to UTF-8

2003-02-11 12:01:11

Yes, but that's an MUA issue.  I repeat: what has this got to do with
IETF wire protocols?

the email protocol is not just used on wires (or fiber);
interoperability in other contexts is also important.

nor is this the only IETF protocol that specifies a file format.  DNS
zone files and MIBs are other examples.

Earlier, someone said "on most systems, the wire format and the
storage format are essentially thesame.  (modulo line-ending
differences)".

In the first place, so what?  Extending an IETF wire protocol will not
erase your MUA from your disk drive. 

nor will it upgrade your SMTP server.

In the second place, though, I think the claim "on most systems" is
not correct.  Unix-centric minds think that way, but I'm pretty
confident that the vast majority of individual users are not in that
situation. 

I suspect you're wrong about "vast majority".  Significant numbers, yes.
But even proprietary systems are sometimes based on off-the-shelf
tools and standard message formats.  Why pay for the inefficency of
conversion when it's not needed? But even if you're right, it doesn't
matter. The number of mail messages that are stored in wire format is
still significant.  We don't need to break compatibility of folks using
them even if there are large numbers of folks not using them.

I don't think IETF wants to encourage obsolence of data formats in
general, much less email messages in particular.  One reason we still
use ASCII in RFCs is that it's the best archival format for text that
we've found.

Keith

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