Re: Form feed in Net-UTF8? (Was: FWD: Re: Comments onUnicode Format for Network Interchange

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Saturday, 06 October, 2007 12:12 +0900 Martin Duerst
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> FF is a tricky one. It's definitely used in RFCs, and can
> be helpful for printing (although less and less so). But
> in a protocol context, where pages are nonexisting, it will
> only cause trouble. So I'd suggest that the SHOULD NOT is kept,
> but give a bit more detail. For some shot at wording, I'd
> change:
> 
> "SHOULD NOT be used unless required by exceptional
> circumstances"
> 
> to something like:
> 
> "SHOULD NOT be used unless the protocol or format has a need
> to express page breaks in plain text (as e.g. done in the
> format for RFCs)."

Martin, since I already shipped -05 and, thanks to the new
automated system, it has been posted, please see how you like
the treatment there.   I think we agree on the principles, so
would welcome suggestions for further tuning.

While I could live with the text you propose above, it seems to
me to lead onto a slippery slope.  Try substituting, for "page
breaks" above, terms like "alert sounds", "visual emphasis such
as highlighting or colored characters", or "flashing lines".
FormFeeds are much more frequent in text, and do appear in RFCs,
but the principles are, I think, the same.

      john