- From: Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com>
- Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 20:25:45 -0400
- To: WWW-Tag <www-tag@w3.org>
- Cc: ietf-xml-mime@imc.org
murata@hokkaido.email.ne.jp (MURATA Makoto) writes: >> > I'm just saying UTF-8 everywhere is even more unrealistic than any >> > other options at hand. >> >> Too bad, because it's the only option that's remotely practical in >> the long term. Do you really think every programmer who wants to >> mung text is going to include code that supports not only the >> hundreds of extant character encodings but also the seventeen kinds >> of in-band and out-of-band declarations of them? > >I think that persuading users is more difficult than >persuading programmers. I have encouraged use of Unicode >for XML in Japan, but nothing has happened. Even in the US, when I talk to users about Unicode I get blank stares. An awful lot of people have simply been told "UTF-8 is the same as ASCII" and write XML in 100% ASCII, using character references or entity references for anything outside of ASCII. Heck, they don't even specify encoding a lot of the time, just trusting blindly in ASCII magic. The ASCII-derived inertia in this country may favor UTF-8, but I don't think that inertia is sufficient cause to drive the whole world toward UTF-8. UTF-16 I could see as plausible, as more and more tools cope with it, but that's a real change. I thought XML was wise to demand support for at least two encodings (UTF-8 and UTF-16) and leave the door open for others. In any case, I don't think a revision of RFC 3023 is the place to attempt to make the whole world use UTF-8, whether or not it's a good idea. Simon St.Laurent http://simonstl.com http://monasticxml.org
Received on Sunday, 21 September 2003 20:25:53 UTC