Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft

[Chris Newman <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> Martin, I haven't forgotten about your very detailed problem statement
> at <http://www.imc.org/ietf-url/mail-archive/0052.html>.  My question was
> whether all the other people advocating non-ASCII URLs agree to that
> problem statement, and in particular to the course of action for the
> current draft revision.  The problem I am having is that every time
> I explain why one solution won't work, people defend it by describing
> the merits of some other solution (or even some other problem).  It seems
> to me that if you can't agree on what problem is being solved, then
> arguing about a solution is pointless.

That problem statement is a bit verbose, but accurate.

> I think there is a way to define UTF-8 preference for URL encoding
> such that it won't break existing services, by forbidding transcoding
> of already-encoded octets.  However, I won't bother to explain that
> until there is broad agreement on what needs to be solved.

Yes, if you forbid transcoding of %80-%FF, and that representation were
actually used in the filesystem, then the charset (or lack thereof) in the
filesystem isn't a problem.