Re: UTF-8 URL for testing

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

On Fri, 11 Apr 1997 16:29:57 -0700 (PDT) Larry Masinter 
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> Just because a problem is important doesn't
> mean that we should recommend something that has not yet
> been demonstrated to actually solve the problem.
>...

Dan and Francois,

While I'm very anxious to see a real solution that 
addresses the underlying issues here, I'm forced to agree 
with Larry.  We don't "make" things happen by standardize 
untested ideas and arguments, however logical, that 
things are easy to do don't move the discussion forward 
much.  I don't think that timing of standards are much of 
the issue here.  It is just that we have a large installed 
base and I'd prefer to see a demonstration that it works 
well, that it won't cause significant problems with 
existing (unmodified) clients, servers, or users, etc.

And, as I have said many times before, while I recognize 
and accept the enthusiasm for UTF-8, especially among users 
of languages with Latin-based alphabetic systems, I would 
prefer that, when we make protocol decisions that are 
expected to have very long lifetimes, we use systems that 
don't penalize non-Roman language groups as severely as 
UTF-8 tends to do.

    john