Re: [Json] Call for Consensus: Proposed Text for "8.1 Character Encoding"

[Julian Reschke <[e-mail]>]

On 2017-03-28 06:48, Tim Bray wrote:
> First of all, let me say that I’m delighted with, and fully support, the
> promotion of the status of UTF-8 in the JSON RFC to MUST.  I suspect
> this steps way outside the JSONbis charter, but that’s a problem for
> chairs and ADs, not yr humble editor.
>
> Comments on Matt's proposed text:
>
> 1. How about a very short historical note, along the lines of: “Previous
> specifications of JSON, including the predecessor RFCs, have not
> required the use of UTF-8 for use with the application/json media type.
> However, implementors of JSON-based software have overwhelmingly chosen
> to use the UTF-8 encoding, to the extent that it is the only realistic
> way to achieve interoperability in software which generates or consumes
> JSON.”
>
> ... moving on...

If we do this, we'll have to add it to the "changes from 7159" section.

> ...
>     Recipients that wish to support Unicode encodings other than UTF-8
>     can do this using a detection mechanism that is based on the fact
>     that the first character will always have a Unicode code point
>     greater than 0 and less than 128, thus the UTF-16/32 variants can
>     be detected by inspecting the first octets for nulls.
>
>
> ​3. Is it just me, or does it feel really dorky to talk mysteriously
> about this detection mechanism without providing details?  On top of
> which, anyone who's writing the kind of software that might lead one to
> consult ​an RFC first shouldn't bloody well use anything but UTF-8.  If
> people really want to have this, I think we owe the world an outline of
> the algorithm, maybe in an appendix. I'll volunteer to make my best
> effort to draft it and try to get consensus that it's correct..  If we
> can't, that's a powerful symbol that we shouldn't have this language.
> But that's my fallback position; my real request to the group is that we
> just take this out.

That was proposed before; it seems some participants are opposed to 
saying "too much" about the detection, leading it to be implemented more 
than before.

Best regards, Julian