From: David Barr (barr@visi.com)
Date: Tue Jan 14 2003 - 13:56:16 CST
> Given that people have been sending 8-bit data in headers for
> years without regard to any existing standard, why do you
> believe that releasing a standard that mandates UTF-8 will
> cause them to start paying attention to standards again?
It doesn't take much common sense to see those people putting 8-bit data in
headers are precisely the ones who think a) 8-bits in headers work (for
their purposes) and thus b) would be most likely to adopt an 8-bit standard.
Most importantly they would likely be the *least* likely to accept going
back to 7 bits and encoding if they already have experience that 8-bits
work.
> I must say that I don't find the argument "because I
> personally like this new standard better than the one that we
> have now" particularly persuasive when it comes to predicting
> the behavior of anyone other than you personally.
Given the history of how many standards have evolved in the past, I can't
much reason to agree with you. Protocols are *full* of examples of this
sort of evolution, whereby technically illegal (but largely working)
practices evolved into an accepted form. Even Usenet. For example, the
now-obsolete 14-character newsgroup component limit. Or the leading-digit
prohibition in early DNS. People did illegal but common sense things, and
eventually the standards caught up to them. Once they did, they adopted the
new more sensible stanards.
--Dave