FW: Coding of national characters?

[<Viktor.Steiner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>As a European I understand your problem.  But 2 wrongs don't make a right!
>PrintableString is well-defined and shouldn't be misused either.  ISO 8859-1
>is a good solution for European languages, but the question is: How should it
>be coded?
>
>When will the Americans learn that there is a Rest-of-the-World?
>Mit freundlichen GrŸssen a Meilleures salutations w Kind regards
>Viktor Steiner
>[ viktor.steiner@swisscom.com  |  viktor.steiner@unisys.com ]
>
>----------
>From: 	lars.gu.johansson@posten.se[SMTP:lars.gu.johansson@posten.se]
>Sent: 	22 September 1997 10:58
>To: 	ietf-pkix@tandem.com
>Subject: 	Coding of national characters?
>
>We have a problem...
>
>In PKIX part 1, chapter 4.1.2.4  "Issuer Name" the issuer field
>(and the subject field similarly) is defined. There are no
>mandatory X.520 attributes (like country or commonName etc)
>but the the DirectoryString is defined in ASN.1 as:
>
>>  DirectoryString ::= CHOICE {
>>           teletexString           TeletexString (SIZE (1..maxSize)),
>>           printableString         PrintableString (SIZE (1..maxSize)),
>>           universalString         UniversalString (SIZE (1..maxSize))
>
>Below this definition it is stated that:
>
>>   The directoryString is defined as a choice of PrintableString,
>>   TeletexString and UniversalString.  Conforming CAs shall choose from
>>   these options as follows:
>>
>>      (a) if the character set is sufficient, the string will be
>>      represented as a PrintableString;
>>
>>      (b) failing (a), if the teletexString charater set is sufficient,
>>      the string string will be represented as a TeletexString;
>>
>>      (c) failing (a) and (b), the string shall be represented as a
>>      UniversalString.
>
>The problem for us outside the US is how to encode national characters.
>In Sweden for example, PrintableString which is equivalent to 7-bit ASCII
>is not sufficient. According to the standard we would then make use of
>teletexString which is equivalent to the T.61 character set.
>
>Now, T.61 is an old standard that is very seldomly used nowadays. In
>particular neither Netscape Navigator nor Microsoft Internet Explorer
>make use of T.61.
>
>Instead both Navigator and Explorer uses the character set in ISO 8859-1
>(Latin-1 which is equivalent to 8-bit ASCII). This character set is used for
>both the PrintableString tag and the teletexString tag.
>
>Clearly the use of ISO 8859-1 in conjuction with the teletexString tag is an
>error and some X.500 directories won't accept this. The effect would be
>that searching these directories becomes impossible.
>
>The other alternative (ISO 8859-1 with the PrintableString tag) looks very
>attractive IMHO and I would prefer that this solution were incorporated into
>the standard. There are still problems however: many complilers based
>on ASN.1 doesn't accept 8-bit characters in a PrintableString.
>
>Can anyone on this list see a solution to this problem? If so, I would
>suggest
>that the PKIX-1 draft is updated accordinly.
>
>Regards,
>/Lars Johansson
>Sweden Post
>
>