Re: Last Call: Originator-Info Message Header to Experimental

["Martin J. Duerst" <duerst at W3.ORG>]

At 08:37 98/07/14 -0400, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
> I am in favor of the proposed Originator_Info header, but the Devil is
> in the details.

> Given the current direction of internationalization, I don't see why
> any choice of character encoding other than UTF-8 makes sense. Use of
> MIME means that attributes will be unreadable by those not possessing
> the appropriate character sets, even if they have all of the glyphs.

Given the text:

> 5. Multinational Considerations
> 
>      Parameters in character sets other than US-ASCII MAY use MIME
>      parameter extensions [MIME-PARAM].  This MAY also be used to
>      provide language labeling and continuations.

there are some even more basic problems. First, the title "multinational"
is in appropriate. Even in the US, somebody might want to use all kinds
of languages. "Multilingual" would be a serious improvement.

Second, the "MAY"s are unclear. The intent was probaly something like:

Parameters in character sets other than US-ASCII MAY be used.
If they are used, they MUST use MIME parameter extensions.

Currently, the text can be read to include any other kind of
encoding mechanisms.


I agree with Shmuel that UTF-8 is the way to go. But doing this
header-by-header might not really be the best solution.



Regards,   Martin.