Re: Suggested character set policy for the IETF

My judgement on the matter:

For better or worse, the IETF has a definition of "character set" that is not
correct, but is in common use.

It is more important for documents to make accurate definitions of what they
are talking about than any particular nomenclature.  In other words, I believe
that it is alright to use "character set" provided that the term be
specifically defined for its usage in the document.

I am, however, sympathetic to Martin's position.  I agree that "charset"
should be the commonly used term, leading to wording such as:
	In this document, the term "character set" (commonly called a
	"charset") refers to the combination of coded character set and
	character encoding scheme.  Non-IETF specifications use the term
	"character set" to refer to the "coded character set", so the
	term "charset" is preferred for the IETF definition.
(both CCS and CES should be defined earlier).


--Boundary (ID uEbHHWxWEwCKT9wM3evJ5w)

Received on Thursday, 26 June 1997 14:16:01 UTC