Re: I18N Concensus - Generic Syntax Document

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

>>  An HTTP server doesn't need one -- its URLs are
>>either composed by computation (in which case knowing the charset is not
>>possible) or by derivation from the filesystem (in which case it will use
>>whatever charset the filesystem uses, and in any case has no way of
>>determining whether or not that charset is UTF-8).
>
>I don't know if you can just rule out filesystems just like that.
>I can imagine networked filesystems that span hosts that would have,
>or need to have, the locale stored at the mountpoint.

I am sure it is possible on some file systems to determine the charset.
It just isn't possible on all of the file systems for which you can
use an Apache server, nor is it possible for us to distribute code
that maps from any possible filesystem charset into UTF-8 and back
again, nor is it desirable for us to build a server that does it in
the first place because, as I said in a message a while back, I don't
think it is a good idea for http URLs to contain (or be displayed)
as anything other than ASCII characters, regardless of the locale.

.....Roy