D J Bernstein <djb(_at_)cr(_dot_)yp(_dot_)to> writes:
Actually, there's very little opposition (especially among implementors)
to requiring all MTAs, MUAs, etc. to handle UTF-8 messages. Eventually
we will all be using UTF-8; all relevant bugs must be fixed. Only the
wildest ``7 bits forever!'' proponents, such as Keith Moore, disagree.
The real controversy is over whether we should also do _other_ things
before UTF-8 is working everywhere. For example, should we introduce
some ad-hoc 7-bit character encoding for newsgroup names?
Many of us (especially implementors) believe that these short-term 7-bit
kludges have huge costs (as illustrated by your message) and miniscule
benefits. We believe that the 7-bit kludges should be dropped.
Our opponents are claiming that the IESG will demand a 7-bit solution.
But they aren't opposing the requirement of UTF-8 support; they're
opposing the reliance on UTF-8 as the sole solution.
I'm not sure that I agree with your summary of the positions, but I'm
certainly sympathetic to this viewpoint. Just implementing UTF-8 feels a
lot cleaner to me too.
However, my main interest personally is to get something published by the
IETF documenting the Usenet article format that isn't as horribly obsolete
and out of date as RFC 1036 is. I'm also most definitely not a mail
system implementor or an IMAP implementor and don't know what issues
implementors in those areas face.
One additional option that I didn't mention would be to decide that the
IETF standards process is out of touch with the reality of what
implementors want and to then simply punt on specifying a non-ASCII
encoding for newsgroups in the standard (so as not to get dragged into
these arguments) and encourage anyone who wants to use a non-ASCII
character set in practice to use UTF-8. This will work for most news
server software. I personally don't have a sufficient grasp on the issues
facing news client implementors, IMAP implementors, or mail system
implementors to know whether that's a viable solution outside of news, and
if so, whether it's the best solution available.
--
Russ Allbery (rra(_at_)stanford(_dot_)edu)
<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>