From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Sun Feb 23 2003 - 13:04:42 CST
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
> In <3E56DB9D.20906@Sonietta.blilly.com>, on 02/21/2003
> at 09:08 PM, Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> said:
>
>
>>Not true; today we do *not* have a standard that says send raw utf-8
>
>
> That has nothing to do with what he wrote.
What he wrote, in case you forgot, is that *if* we had a standard
that blessed raw utf-8 *and* it was ignored, we'd be no worse off.
That is not true, because we would have all sorts of incompatibilities
between interoperating protocols.
No matter, there's no chance of that happening. Raw utf-8 is going
nowhere unless it goes everywhere by agreed consent, as far as
the message format is concerned.
> And lest you try putting words in my mouth, no, I am not happy about
> that situation. But it is current practice, and we need to figure out
> how to either change it or live with it.
Blessing 0.0060% of current usage which is non-compliant while
ignoring the remaining 15% which is non-compliant doesn't buy
anything useful, the price (in terms of incompatibility
with existing infrastructure) is way too high, and the product
doesn't live up to its hype.
Now if somebody who has substantive objections to RFC 2047/2231
for text strings in header fields would enumerate them, they
can be addressed. That approach introduces no new incompatibility,
addresses language-tagging, is implementable (ideed, is already
widely implemented), and will pass IESG muster.