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Re: [EAI] Unicode vs. UTF-8 / Encoding vs. Representation

John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com> Tue, 28 December 2010 04:15 UTC

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Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2010 23:17:32 -0500
From: John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>
To: dcrocker@bbiw.net
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Subject: Re: [EAI] Unicode vs. UTF-8 / Encoding vs. Representation
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--On Monday, December 27, 2010 8:06 PM -0800 Dave CROCKER
<dhc2@dcrocker.net> wrote:

>>  "ASCII versus
>> Unicode" and "ASCII versus Unicode are ultimately equally
>> incorrect.
> 
> Well, it is essential to make the distinction between legacy
> and new semantics, since it is the essence of the current work.

yes.  That was what people were trying to do with "ASCII versus
UTF-8".  As you point out, that doesn't work well.  "ASCII
versus Unicode" really doesn't work any better.

> The choice of terms is a separate issue.

Indeed.

>  If you have
> alternative labeling, that would be great to consider.

I hope someone in the WG will have a good suggestion.   If not,
we may be back to "ASCII" versus "non-ASCII" as the disjoint
pair, "Unicode"  to describe the international CCS (inclusive of
ASCII), and "UTF-8" to describe the particular encoding that is
used for this protocol and recommended by RFC 2277 (a
recommendation that is reinforced by draft-iab-idn-encoding and
other more recent work).

    john

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