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RE: I-D file formats and internationalization

2005-11-30 15:09:10

 
  *> > 
  *> > Unicode support is a different matter. I find the current 
  *> > IETF policy to be incredibly bigoted. Many RFCs and I-Ds are 
  *> > currently forced to misspell the names of authors and 
  *> > contributors, which doesn't seem like correct attribution to 
  *> > me. So, I recommend that the IETF secretariat and the RFC 
  *> > Editor change their policies to allow UTF-8 text files. That 
  *> > way, older RFCs and I-Ds produced using the current tools 
  *> > would follow the same encoding.

This issue has been brought up before and has been on our list of
things to worry about for at least two years.  But we always run
aground on the following consideration: there is a substantial
constituency for have some least-common-denominator form of IETF
documents, so people can read and print them with even the most
primitive, old-fashioned (unfashionable?) tools.  Allowing extended
character sets for author names seems like a really nice idea to
the RFC Editor as well, but we see no way to do that and keep the
LCD.  You need some kind of structured document that some people
won't have the tools to display, search, print, ...  The
RFC Editor would welcome a way out of this dilemma.

It is not bigotry, only realism.

Bob Braden

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