Re: PROPOSAL: i74: Encoding for non-ASCII headers

Martin Duerst wrote:
> >So, for informative text (i.e. non protocol) such as text after a
> >status code, it might be appropriate to recommend that TEXT be parsed
> >as UTF-8 when valid, and ISO-8859-1 otherwise.
> 
> I agree with Albert that this would be a bad idea. I'm trying to
> propose UTF-8 for new headers to get away from iso-8859-1, not to
> perpetuate iso-8859-1.

I agree with both of you, and I'm suggesting ISO-8859-1 fallback
_only_ for compatibility with currently existing headers which already
contain ISO-8859-1, and for Reason-Phrase.  Sorry for being unclear
about that.

That's because I'd expect HTTP receiver implementations to do that
anyway, if ISO-8859-1 is seen in the wild, whether the specification
recommends it or not.

If it turns out that nobody, in real life, is using ISO-8859-1 at the
moment for those things, then of course drop it.

-- Jamie