Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft

["Roy T. Fielding" <[e-mail]>]

>> >(3) whatever localized character set is in use
>> >
>> >(3) Never works, because it doesn't interoperate.  It results in a bunch
>> >of islands which can't communicate, except via US-ASCII.
>> 
>> But that is what Martin said he wanted -- the ability of an author to
>> decide what readership is most important.  Why is it that it is okay
>> to localize the address, but not to localize the charset?
>
>I can't speak for Martin.  But if I understand what you're
>saying, my response is that people want to use their own language in URLs
>and will do so whatever the standard says.  If we define a standard way
>for them to include their national characters in such a way that those
>characters won't be misinterpreted by the recipient, then we've achived 
>interoperability.  That's the goal of protocol design.

Right, and requiring UTF-8 will cause characters to be misinterpreted by
the recipient if the recipient doesn't know that it is supposed to be
using UTF-8.  That is the difference between designing a protocol and
defining an existing protocol.

.....Roy