Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft

["Karen R. Sollins" <[e-mail]>]

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   Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 00:09:11 -0700
   From: Edward Cherlin <[e-mail]>
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...

   I have said at least ten times in this discussion, with no acknowledgement
   from anyone, that we are to assume that people will not publish Unicode
   URLs without knowing that their servers support them.

   If I am going to create an ftp: site, and I don't check what version of
   what ftp server I'm using, I'm a fool, and likewise for gopher: and telnet:
   and the others. If I put out an https: URL and I don't have a secure server
   to receive it, I'm a fool. If I intend to accept encoded UTF-8, I need to
   find out how my server can deal with it. If I don't intend to accept it, I
   can regard encoded UTF-8 in URLs as plain ASCII, without breaking any
   process that is not already broken.

...

   --
   Edward Cherlin     [e-mail]     Everything should be made
   Vice President     Ask. Someone knows.       as simple as possible,
   NewbieNet, Inc.                                 __but no simpler__.
   http://www.newbie.net/                Attributed to Albert Einstein


Edward and everyone,

I have tried VERY hard to stay out of this discussion, but I know have
to ask a question as suggested by the extraction above.  Must one
conclude from a position of supporting encoding of character sets in
UTF-8 that the server at the site of the resource MUST be of a certain
flavor supporting that character set, and furthermore that perhaps the
general practice will be that each server will only support one or a
small number?  With no general solution implemented globally, those
with less popular character sets (this often goes hand in hand with
less technology and less economic strength) are much more likely to be
left out in the cold.  So much for general internationalization,
unless this means only internationalization for the larger, richer
communities.

			Karen Sollins

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Karen R. Sollins				[e-mail]
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