From: Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 22 2002 - 08:58:10 CDT
Kai Henningsen <kaih@khms.westfalen.de> writes:
> "If the only solutions people are willing to implement (without being
> pushed) are strictly local solutions that cannot meaningfully cooperate,
> then obviously global solutions are the wrong choice."
> Or even more plainly, "if people are only willing to "fix" things in
> clearly wriong ways, obviously right fixes are wrong."
> It seems to me one doesn't need to be a professor for logic to spot the
> flaw in this kind of argument. Or, put differently, your "obvious"
> doesn't seem to have more in common with my "obvious" except the
> spelling.
I don't think you understood the point of my comment.
I'm responding to Charles's statement that the only thing that anyone will
implement is local solutions. If that's true, we're doomed regardless in
the quest for a global solution, and nothing that we put into a standard
will make a lick of difference.
If no one is willing to implement UTF-8, *we will never have UTF-8*.
Period. End of story. It doesn't matter how good it is, how many
standards are written that include it, or how wonderful of a global
solution it is; unless you can convince someone to WRITE CODE, this is all
a bunch of hot air.
I find it very difficult to see how you can disagree with that. I've yet
to see someone's mail delivered or news propagated by a standards
document.
In a world where the programmers worked for the IETF, the IETF could tell
them to implement the standards and they would have to comply. But that's
not the world in which we live.
-- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>