Web Character Model and IRI spec (Re: FW: character encoding.)

Hi.

Regarding the use of WebDAV in i18n environment, I am assuming
that WebDAV spec will be updated (hopefully soon) to refer IRI
and CHARMOD. IRI defines i18n-ized format of URI and CHARMOD
defines how you can define/implement a spec so it can be inter-
nationally deployed.

Am I correct, or is this not a decided issue yet?

My current concern is that these specs are taking longer than
expected (no surprise as they're tackling complex problem).
So by the time they arrive, it could turn out that existing
implementations (with glitches in i18n) reached a critical mass
and simply don't go away after all. Number of implementations
supporting UTF-8 is growing, but even some of them are still not
interoperable as Unicode has its own issues also (see CHARMOD).

It's probably just a matter of time, but the need for a updated
WebDAV spec is really wanted. I believe delay in IRI and CHARMOD
would impact WebDAV heavily as people frequently use i18n URI.

How does it sound to go ahead and clarify support of at least
part of the IRI spec in advance, so actual implementation
wouldn't be so far away from CHARMOD/IRI when set? I think
clarifying URI (and its partial representation) to be %HH encoded
form of normalized UTF-8 is a key issue here.

References:

    [IRI] http://www.w3.org/International/O-URL-and-ident
          http://www.w3.org/International/2002/draft-duerst-iri-00.txt
[CHARMOD] http://www.w3.org/TR/charmod/

Regards,
--
Taisuke Yamada <tai@iij.ad.jp>
Internet Initiative Japan Inc., Technical Planning Division

Received on Wednesday, 17 July 2002 06:28:44 UTC