Re: character sets: Term as OCTET STRING

Pieter Van Lierop wrote:

>  It is relatively easy to support InternationalString.
>
> But the question is: How long will it take before all version 3 servers in
> the world will accept InternationalString as Term type? And the answer is,
> that we will never be sure that all servers would want to do that. So in
> that case, for the sake of interoperability, when I am a Z39.50 client and I
> am sending a request to server I don't know, I use OCTET STRING because that
> gives the best chance on success.

But Pieter, consider this argument:  We're assuming a version 3 server with
character set negotiation. Thus some implementor took a version 3 implementation
(which did not previously support InternationalString) and implemented character
set negotiation on top. It's safe to assume the implementor  read the character
set negotiation definintion. If he read it correctly he would note that he has
to implement InternationalString in order to properly implement character set
negotiation. And as you note above " It is relatively easy to support
InternationalString."   If he has to modify the server anyway, why didn't he
implement it? Or to put it more bluntly, why would the so implementor blatantly
ignore the specification?

--Ray

Received on Wednesday, 10 July 2002 11:19:24 UTC