Re: Delta Compression and UTF-8 Header Values

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> --------
> In message <CABP7RbfRLXPpL4=wip=FvqD3DM7BM8PXi7uRswHAusXUmPO_xw@mail.gmail.com>
> , James M Snell writes:
>
>>So the question is: do we want to allow UTF-8 header values?
>
> Jim Gettys famously laid down some principles for X11 development,
> number 1 and 3 of which are:
>
>         1.Do not add new functionality unless an implementor cannot
>           complete a real application without it.
>
>         3.The only thing worse than generalizing from one example
>           is generalizing from no examples at all.
>
> Do we have two examples of what it is that somebody cannot do (in a
> reasonable way?) without UTF-8 header values ?
>

AFAIC, the main motivation for allowing UTF-8 headers is to reduce
(and *eventually* eliminate) the need for
punycode/pct-encoding/B-codec/Q-codec/RFC5987.

This is not so much a question of enabling a use case that cannot be
"resonably" done without UTF-8 headers. Rather, it's a question of
simplifying things for developers by reducing existing complexity (by
moving that complexity into the protocol).

- James

>
> --
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> phk@FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Received on Friday, 8 February 2013 19:45:32 UTC