[Bug 11423] Character sets not registered with IANA

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=11423

--- Comment #5 from brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> 2010-11-29 13:17:04 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #3)
> Big Blue managed to do it, so it's easy? Your standard of proof may be lower
> than mine here. ;)

Several large corporations have done it, including Microsoft themselves.  I
don't see even a cursory response to the listed objections to the registration,
or really any follow-up whatsoever on Microsoft's part.  At least I respond to
objections. ;-)

> Assuming you're interested in user agents being able to process the existing
> web corpus using only IANA-registered characters sets, you perhaps should have
> some level of interest in doing so. ;)

I'm interested in a complete specification.  If the HTML5 Working Group wants
to refer to windows-949, then I think it should be appropriately registered
with IANA.  I would be just as happy (maybe even happier) if windows-949 were
not mentioned at all, since I personally find the "misinterpreted for
compatibility" idea revolting.  But that's beside the point: for better or for
worse, IANA is *the* authoritative source for character sets (among myriad
other things).  If I need to know about a character set, I look there first,
and so will pretty much every implementer.

> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/goglobal/cc305154.aspx (which the spec
> references) defines an authoritative mapping of windows-949 to Unicode.

If you want to register it, I will fully support it.  In fact, once it's done,
I'll close this bug report myself.  I am not registering it because I am not
willing to be ultimately responsible for the specification of a character set
for a language I don't read, write, speak, or understand.  I also believe it's
an unnecessary legacy character set.

> If the spec simply defined the preferred name of Windows-949 as
> (case-insensitive) "Windows-949", could we close this bug?

Nope.  I would be happy with (a) windows-949 being registered with IANA, or (b)
windows-949 not being mentioned at all.  An additional alternative, which is
not at all preferable, is a note in the text to the effect of "The HTML5
Working Group has deliberately chosen to refer to and favor over other,
better-specified alternatives (e.g. EUC-KR) the character set 'windows-949',
even though it is not registered properly with IANA."

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Received on Monday, 29 November 2010 13:17:06 UTC