Re: Rewrite of feature tag syntax rules

On Mon, 19 May 1997, Koen Holtman wrote:

> Jeffrey Mogul:

> >HTTP is for computers to talk to each other, not for humans.
> >
> >Koen and others want human users to be able to specify feature
> >tags.  Fine; just introduce a map between a set of human-sensible,
> >internationalized names, and the enumerated set of feature tags.
> >This map could be implementation specific, or it could be
> >standardized *independent of HTTP*, to make service-authoring
> >tools more portable.  But the purpose of this map is to cleanly
> >separate what computers do and what humans do.

Such mappings have existed for a long time. One of them is called
us-ascii :-). Its most widely usable internationalized version is
called UTF-8.


> I don't like the idea of requiring the use of a mapping tool to make
> things author-friendly.  That is no way to bootstrap a new
> technology.

Well, the mapping tools are already available; they are called
text editors or so :-).


Regards,	Martin.

Received on Thursday, 22 May 1997 03:29:03 UTC