Re: RFC 5987bis WG last call - naming the encoding

On 2016-11-18 00:26, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> --------
> In message <b65d5148-29f0-5e8b-9375-590ca8e52357@gmx.de>, Julian Reschke writes:
>
>> I got some great feedback from one of our chairs who checked how this
>> impacts *his* work on RFC 5988bis (which refers to RFC 5987) -- see
>> <https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/267>.
>
> So, silly question time...
>
> The stuff in RFC5987bis overlaps but is incompatible with the
> utf8-string in the "common structure" draft I've written.
>
> We should spend a moment deciding what to do about that.
>
> RFC5987bis is more general, in the sense that you can specify any
> character set you want, including BAUDOT and EBCDIC, whereas CS
> only makes room for utf8.

That's a leftover from where it originated. It only requires support for 
UTF-8, so that's the only thing you can reliably send.

> CS can adopt the RFC5987 charset tagging, and instead of utf8_string
> have a general "non-ascii-string"
>
> RFC5987bis also allows you to specify an optional language,
> CS can obviously adopt that too.

I wouldn't go there.

> But now that I actually look at it, I have at least
> three questions about it:
>
> First:  The RFC5987bis draft doesn't mention the Accept-Language
>         header with a single word.  If the client says it
> 	only understands elbonian, we shouldn't send it hungarian
> 	strings in HTTP-headers ?

That is true, but it really doesn't need to be stated here. It would be 
just advice anyway, right?

> Second: Should we also make the charset optional, defaulting to
>         ascii, to allow people to specify only the language ?

We can't without breaking existing implementations.

> Third: Shouldn't we allow alternative languages ?
>
> In other words, should this be legal ?
>
> 	Content-Type: liquid/beverage ; \
> 		type*=utf-8'de'wei%C39Fbier ; \
> 		type*=iso8859-1'da'hvede%D8l ; \
> 		type*=''white%20beer

RFC5987bis just defines what goes into the parameter value. Everything 
else is up to the definition of the header field. See also 
<https://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc5987bis-03.html#rfc.section.4.p.2>.


Best regards, Julian

Received on Thursday, 17 November 2016 23:38:27 UTC