Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft
John C Klensin <klensin@mci.net> Tue, 15 April 1997 16:33 UTC
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Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 11:55:43 -0400
From: John C Klensin <klensin@mci.net>
Subject: Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft
In-Reply-To: <199704151350.PAA20358@valinor.malmo.trab.se>
To: Dan Oscarsson <Dan.Oscarsson@trab.se>
Cc: Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no, uri@bunyip.com, fielding@kiwi.ics.uci.edu
Reply-To: John C Klensin <klensin@mci.net>
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On Tue, 15 Apr 1997 15:50:11 +0200 (MET DST) Dan Oscarsson <Dan.Oscarsson@trab.se> wrote: >... > Well, Swedish letters like åäö are normally called Latin, but I assume you > mean ascii. I can't speak for Roy, but, in my earlier note on the subject, I meant *Latin*. The reality is that UTF-8 is "user friendly" --and will get through a lot of systems without either advanced planning or difficulties-- if the character set that is actually in use is ISO 8859-1, not just ASCII. It isn't too bad for the other Latin alphabets. But for the character collections that are distinctly not Latin-based, the display resulting from the use of UTF-8 in the absence of the sort of aggressive, front-end, "everyone needs to apply it" translations that Roy suggested are not only not user-friendly, but closely approximate a secret code (worse than %-notation or the notorious Q-P). If one looks ahead more than a year or so and assumes worldwide use of the Internet, there are more of "them" than there are of "us" and the marginal fraction of the population that considers 8859-1 (and hence UTF-8) to be user-friendly as compared to ASCII is, unfortunately, barely worth the trouble. It would have been better had URLs been carefully and thoughtfully internationalized from the very beginning. For whatever reasons, they weren't. A conversion now is going to be painful. But, if the pain is worth it, and I suspect it might be, then let's look to a balanced, equitable, *international* solution, not using UTF-8 encoding in the hope that no one who uses ideographic characters will be bothered about what happens to them. > If we cannot find a way to send URLs containing any character in a way so > that the characters can be understood and displyed in a user friendly > manner, the web and URLs are not the future. I completely agree with this. However, I think we need to adopt a very broad understanding of "user friendly" as well as keeping in mind that, for intersystem protocol purposes, ASCII, -- or even the stable subset of ISO 646 / T.50 -- have a much more successful track record (in both the IETF and ISO/ITU arenas) than any of the many attempts at "national", "localized", "international", or "universal" character sets. john
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Foteos Macrides
- leading ".." (Re: revised ...) Gregory J. Woodhouse
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Roy T. Fielding
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Francois Yergeau
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Roy T. Fielding
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Francois Yergeau
- Transcribing non-ascii URLs [was: revised "generi… Dan Connolly
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Edward Cherlin
- Re: Transcribing non-ascii URLs [was: revised "ge… Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Roy T. Fielding
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Dan Oscarsson
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft John C Klensin
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Gary Adams - Sun Microsystems Labs BOS
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Larry Masinter
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Gary Adams - Sun Microsystems Labs BOS
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Chris Newman
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Chris Newman
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Keld J|rn Simonsen
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Roy T. Fielding
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Chris Newman
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Roy T. Fielding
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Roy T. Fielding
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Roy T. Fielding
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Edward Cherlin
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Larry Masinter
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Harald.T.Alvestrand
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Roy T. Fielding
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Jon Knight
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Jon Knight
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft John C Klensin
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Ron Daniel, Jr.
- Re: Transcribing non-ascii URLs [was: revised "ge… Bert Bos
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Gary Adams - Sun Microsystems Labs BOS
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Gary Adams - Sun Microsystems Labs BOS
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Gary Adams - Sun Microsystems Labs BOS
- A workable alternative to "hex-encoded UTF-8 enco… Larry Masinter
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Larry Masinter
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Larry Masinter
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft John C Klensin
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Harald.T.Alvestrand
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Roy T. Fielding
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Chris Newman
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: A workable alternative to "hex-encoded UTF-8 … Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Larry Masinter
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Keld J|rn Simonsen
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Keld J|rn Simonsen
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Jonathan Rosenne
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Keld J|rn Simonsen
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Keld J|rn Simonsen
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Edward Cherlin
- Opaque right hand sides (was: Re: revised "generi… John C Klensin
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Karen R. Sollins
- UTF-8 and URLs Larry Masinter
- Re: UTF-8 and URLs Dan Connolly
- Re: UTF-8 and URLs Chris Newman
- Re: UTF-8 and URLs John C Klensin
- Re: UTF-8 and URLs Francois Yergeau
- Re: UTF-8 and URLs Dan Connolly
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Edward Cherlin
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft John C Klensin
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Keld J|rn Simonsen
- Re: UTF-8 and URLs Martin J. Duerst
- Re: UTF-8 and URLs Francois Yergeau
- Re: UTF-8 and URLs Dan Connolly
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- New proposal (was Re: UTF-8 and URLs) Edward Cherlin
- Re: UTF-8 and URLs Larry Masinter
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Martin J. Duerst
- Re: UTF-8 and URLs Martin J. Duerst
- initial "relative-looking" elements. Larry Masinter
- Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft Edward Cherlin
- Re: initial "relative-looking" elements. Roy T. Fielding