Re: UTF-8 and URLs

[Francois Yergeau <[e-mail]>]

À 09:56 24-04-97 PDT, Larry Masinter a écrit :
>I think given its likely controversial nature, we should clearly
>make these recommendations in a separate RFC, and perhaps with
>a new working group.

Meaning what?  Two separate standards?  Or worse, a standard and an
experimental/informational/BCP?  I thought we had already buried that one.
Who wants a two-tier Web, with only the lower tier internationalized, raise
your hand!

Let's see: we would have an i18n RFC that would allow URLs to contain most
any characters, and a (possibly Draft) standard that would say "All URLs
consist of a restricted set of characters..." (we know which): clear
contradiction.

Further, the (possibly Draft) standard would still be in contradiction with
widespread current practice, would still be technically unsound (incomplete
mapping between octets and characters), and I don't see that it could
gather a consensus when it can't today for these very reasons.  No progress.

On the other hand, would there be a consensus for the new draft to create a
new, separate standard, in contradiction in at least one respect with the
(possibly Draft) standard?  I doubt it.  No progress here either.

Please let's drop the separate draft idea for good.  There is not an
ASCII-only Internet and another for the rest of the world, so let's not
even try to do that in  one of our most important standards.

Regards,


-- 
François Yergeau <[e-mail]>
Alis Technologies Inc., Montréal
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