- From: Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com>
- Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 15:23:08 +0200
- To: Francois Yergeau <FYergeau@alis.com>
- Cc: ietf-charsets@iana.org
On torsdag, okt 3, 2002, at 20:11 Europe/Stockholm, Francois Yergeau
wrote:
> - I think it would be better for *this* RFC to refrain from telling
> senders
> and receivers what to do with the BOM, but to offer advice to protocol
> designers. It is specific protocols that should know better where the
> BOM
> should be banned or allowed.
Not correct, _this_ RFC have to be stringent enough so it is crystal
clear whether BOM should be there, what is to happen if it exists, and
what is to happen if it doesn't. This in turn have to be verified in an
Interoperability test, for example using protocols which allow tagged
and untagged UTF-8 and digital signatures, which ensures we have
multiple implementations of the standard.
The documentation of this interoperability (which doesn't have to be a
formal test, but documented) is part of the last call which I am to
issue as soon as we have a document and the documentation.
From IETF point of view, we do _not_ like alternate byte orders. We had
this discussion in IESG when UTF-16* charsets were to be registered.
Many voices in the IESG only wanted to register "the correct one". The
author (Paul) and myself argued for always having tags for every weird
charset, but say strongly only one format SHOULD be used.
What I hear on this list is that the consensus is that BOM SHOULD NOT
be used. I would like it to be MUST NOT be used in Internet protocols,
which leads to tagged UTF-8 text be illegal if the BOM exists in the
text.
Anyway, what needs to happen now is two things:
- The text in the document has to be change to say BOM is not to be
used
- Someone has to write down interoperability information between
applications
Regarding the interoperability, as Francois is working hard with the
document, can I get someone else to write this? I myself are mostly
irritated I can not copy and paste Unicode text between TextEdit and
Microsoft software in MacOSX, so I might not be the best person to
write down things that work.... :-(
Regards, paf
Received on Thursday, 17 October 2002 11:04:10 UTC