- From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
- Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 12:14:25 PDT
- To: Chris Newman <Chris.Newman@innosoft.com>
- CC: IETF URI list <uri@bunyip.com>
#I find this much too wishy-washy. Not every section of a document can explicitly forbid everything that is forbidden. In general, standards documents work best when they say "how do I use this" rather than listing lots of rules. # I think we should explicitly forbid the use of 8-bit characters I think this document is clear that URLs are currently written with a limited repertoire of characters that is a subset of US-ASCII. That subset does not include "8-bit characters" or "9-bit characters" or "38-bit characters". # and hex-encoded 8-bit characters I think it would be incorrect to disallow hex-encoded 8-bit octets that didn't actually correspond to characters, e.g., in guid schemes, in FTP URLs for FTP servers that *don't* implement UTF-8, etc. So, no. # except as defined by the future I18N URL standard. The future standard will set the standard for the future. All this document says is that it doesn't set that standard. # We need to make it very clear that programs sending 8-bit URLs over # the wire are broken (unless they use UTF8 according to the # future standard). The purpose of this document is to define the standard for how URLs work, and not to 'send a message' about a future standard. I and Martin have actually started work on the 'message', and if you want to help 'send a message' about UTF8, I invite you to actually help craft the 'message'. When we have a standard for UTF8 URLs, we'll have a standard for UTF8 URLs. But that's the only message that you can send that will have any meaning. Larry
Received on Friday, 2 May 1997 15:15:48 UTC