Internet-Draft Non-ASCII in RFCs February 2023
Hoffman Expires 1 September 2023 [Page]
Workgroup:
Network Working Group
Internet-Draft:
draft-hoffman-rfc7997bis-00
Obsoletes:
7997 (if approved)
Published:
Intended Status:
Informational
Expires:
Author:
P. Hoffman
ICANN

The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs

Abstract

In order to support the internationalization of protocols and a more diverse Internet community, the RFC Series must evolve to allow for the use of non-ASCII characters in RFCs. While English remains the required language of the Series, the encoding of RFCs is now in UTF-8, allowing for a broader range of characters than typically used in the English language. This document describes requirements and guidelines for the RFC Production Center and the RFC stream approving bodies regarding the use of non-ASCII characters in RFCs.

This document updates RFC 7997 to reflect changes in the practices of the RFC series since RFC 7997 was published, and makes further changes based on agreements in the IETF community about what characters are allowed in RFCs.

[ A repository for this draft can be found here. ]

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

This Internet-Draft will expire on 1 September 2023.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

For much of the history of the RFC Series, the character encoding used for RFCs has been ASCII [RFC20]. This was a sensible choice at the time: the language of the Series has always been English, a language that primarily uses ASCII-encoded characters (ignoring for a moment words borrowed from more richly decorated alphabets); and, ASCII is the "lowest common denominator" for character encoding, making cross-platform viewing trivial.

There are limits to ASCII, however, that hinder its continued use as the exclusive character encoding for the Series. At the time of the publication of [RFC7997], the increasing need for easily readable, internationalized content suggested that it is time to allow non-ASCII characters in RFCs where necessary. To support this move away from ASCII, RFCs switched to supporting UTF-8 as the default character encoding and allowed support for a broad range of Unicode characters [UnicodeCurrent].

Given the continuing goal of maximum readability across platforms, the use of non-ASCII characters in RFCs should be limited to only where necessary within the text. This document describes the rules under which non-ASCII characters may be used in an RFC. These rules will be applied as the necessary changes are made to submission checking and editorial tools.

This document updates the RFC Style Guide [RFC7322].

The details included in this document are expected to change based on experience gained in publishing new RFCs.

1.1. Acknowledgements

RFC 7997 was written by Heather Flanagan, who was the RFC Series Editor (RSE) at the time of its publication. Getting the IETF community to agree to the changes embodied in RFC 7997 was a difficult task, and it is likely that this current document would be much more difficult to write had RFC 7997 not been worked out first.

The acknowledgements from RFC 7997 are to the members of the IAB i18n program, to the RFC Format Design Team: Nevil Brownlee, Tony Hansen, Joe Hildebrand, Paul Hoffman, Ted Lemon, Julian Reschke, Adam Roach, Alice Russo, Robert Sparks, and Dave Thaler.

1.2. Changes from RFC 7997

The following is an overview of the changes in this document from RFC 7997:

  • Added the role of the RFC stream approving bodies and the RFC Production Center (RPC) as described in [RFC9280] throughout the document. In short, all responsibilities that were held by the RFC Editor in RFC 7997 are now shared between the stream approving bodies and the RPC.
  • Removed requirements of marking non-ASCII characters with XML markup. Clarified that names with non-Latin characters should have Latin transliterations.
  • The basic requirements in Section 2 were softened to reflect the realities of the variability of search engines and web browsers.
  • Changed Section 3 from "Rules for the Use of Non-ASCII Characters" to "Use of Non-ASCII Characters" because the stream approving bodies and the RPC have used, and should continue to use, their own discretion based on what makes the RFC most useful.
  • Language about the future was changed to the past tense to indicate that RFC 7997 was already implemented. For example, "RFCs will switch" was changed to to "RFCs switched", and so on.

2. Basic Requirements

Two fundamental requirements inform the guidance and examples provided in this document. They are:

The stream approving bodies and the RPC may reject any code point that does not render adequately in commonly-used viewers.

3. Use of Non-ASCII Characters

This section describes the guidelines for the use of non-ASCII characters in an RFC. If the stream approving bodies and the RPC identify areas where the use of non-ASCII characters in an RFC negatively impacts the readability of the text, they can require that the authors supply alternate text or change the non-ASCII characters to better suit the expected readers of the RFC.

In general, using the "U+NNNN" syntax from [BCP137] is the suggested way to show Unicode code points as alternate text.

3.1. General Usage throughout a Document

The language of the RFC Series is English. The use of non-ASCII characters is based on the spelling of words commonly used in the English language following the guidance in the Merriam-Webster dictionary [MerrWeb]. RFCs should use the primary spelling listed in that dictionary by default.

Where the use of non-ASCII characters is purely part of an example and not otherwise required for correct protocol operation, giving the Unicode equivalent of the non-ASCII characters is not required, but it can improve the readability of the RFC. For example, for text that says "The value can be followed by a monetary symbol such as ¥ or €", the stream approving body or the RPC might require that it instead say "The value can be followed by a monetary symbol such as ¥ (U+00A5) or € (U+20AC)".

Reference entries (bibliographic text) follow the rules given throughout this section.

[ The example for this section from RFC 7997 has been removed. It was, in fact, not an example of general usage but instead a protocol example. ]

3.2. Person Names

[ RFC 7997 was inconsistent in its rules and examples of when names with non-ASCII characters should be spelled out using all-ASCII transliteration. This section is significantly updated to clarify how names with non-ASCII characters should appear in RFCs. ]

Person names may appear in several places within an RFC (e.g., the header, Acknowledgements, and References).

When a script outside the ASCII character set is used for an individual name, an author-provided, ASCII-only transliteration can appear immediately after the non-ASCII characters, surrounded by parentheses. The stream approving bodies and the RPC decide on a case-by-case basis whether to include the ASCII-only transliteration.

Names of authors appear at the top of RFCs and in the References section with a first initial (if available) and family name. For example, Qin Wu's name might appear as "吴钦 (Q. Wu)". As another example, Patrik Fältström's name might appear as "P. Fältström (P. Faltstrom)", but the version with non-ASCII Latin characters also might be left just as "P. Fältström".

In the Acknowledgements section, the person's full name is spelled out in full without the first initial, such as "The following people contributed to this document: 吴钦 (Qin Wu), ...".

Company names follow the same rules as person names.

3.3. Body of the Document

When the mention of non-ASCII characters is required for correct protocol operation and understanding, the characters' Unicode code points must be used in the text. The addition of each character name is encouraged.

  • Non-ASCII characters require identifying the Unicode code poin, at least on first use in the RFC.
  • Use of the actual UTF-8 character (such as common math symbols like √) is encouraged so that a reader can more easily see what the character is.
  • As stated in Section 3, using the "U+NNNN" syntax from [BCP137] is the suggested way to show Unicode code points as alternate text.

[ Removed "The use of the Unicode character names like "INCREMENT" in addition to the use of Unicode code points is also encouraged." This text was, in fact, wrong in 7997 because the character name did not match the example. ]

For example, [RFC7564] says:

However, the problem is made more serious by introducing the full
range of Unicode code points into protocol strings.  For example,
the characters U+13DA U+13A2 U+13B5 U+13AC U+13A2 U+13AC U+13D2 from
the Cherokee block look similar to the ASCII characters
"STPETER" as they might appear when presented using a "creative"
font family.

This could be replaced with:

However, the problem is made more serious by introducing the full
range of Unicode code points into protocol strings.  For example,
the characters "ᏚᎢᎵᎬᎢᎬᏒ" (U+13DA
U+13A2 U+13B5 U+13AC U+13A2 U+13AC U+13D2) from the Cherokee block
look similar to the ASCII characters "STPETER" as they might
appear when presented using a "creative" font family.

[BCP137] describes the pros and cons of different options for identifying Unicode characters and may help authors decide how to represent the non-ASCII characters in their documents.

3.4. Tables

Tables follow the same rules for identifiers and characters as in Section 3.3. If it is more understandable for a reader)for a given document to have two tables, one including the identifiers and non-ASCII characters and a second with just the non-ASCII characters, authors might include such duplicated information.

3.5. Code Components

The use of the U+ notation is recommended except within a code component where one must follow the rules of the programming language in which the code is being written.

Code components are generally expected to use fixed-width fonts. Where such fonts are not available for a particular script, the best script-appropriate font will be used for that part of the code component.

3.6. Keywords and Citation Tags

Keywords (as tagged with the <keyword> element in XML) and citation tags (as defined in the anchor attributes of <reference> elements) must contain only ASCII characters.

[ Does the WG still want this restriction? ]

3.7. Authors' Address Information

The purpose of providing authors' address information, either postal or email, is to assist readers of an RFC in contacting the author or authors. Authors may include the official postal address as recognized by their company or local postal service without additional Unicode character identification.

If an author's email address includes non-ASCII characters and is a valid email address at the time of publication, it may be given without additional Unicode character identification.

4. Normalization Forms

Authors should not expect normalization forms [UnicodeNorm] to be preserved. If a particular normalization form is expected, it must be noted in the text of the RFC.

5. XML Markup

[ This section needs revision after community discussion ]

As described above, use of non-ASCII characters in areas such as email, company name, address, and name is allowed. In order to make it easier for code to identify the appropriate ASCII alternatives, authors must include an "ascii" attribute to their XML markup when an ASCII alternative is required. See [RFC7991] for more detail on how to tag ASCII alternatives.

6. Internationalization Considerations

The ability to use non-ASCII characters in RFCs in a clear and consistent manner improves the ability to describe internationalized protocols and recognizes the diversity of authors. However, the goal of readability overrides the use of non-ASCII characters within the text.

7. Security Considerations

Valid Unicode that matches the expected text must be verified in order to preserve expected behavior and protocol information.

8. References

8.1. Normative References

[BCP137]
Klensin, J., "ASCII Escaping of Unicode Characters", BCP 137, RFC 5137, .
[RFC7991]
Hoffman, P., "The "xml2rfc" Version 3 Vocabulary", RFC 7991, DOI 10.17487/RFC7991, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7991>.
[RFC7997]
Flanagan, H., Ed., "The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs", RFC 7997, DOI 10.17487/RFC7997, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7997>.
[RFC9280]
Saint-Andre, P., Ed., "RFC Editor Model (Version 3)", RFC 9280, DOI 10.17487/RFC9280, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9280>.
[UnicodeCurrent]
The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard", , <http://www.unicode.org/versions/latest/>.

8.2. Informative References

[MerrWeb]
Merriam-Webster, Inc., "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary", .
[RFC20]
Cerf, V., "ASCII format for network interchange", STD 80, RFC 20, DOI 10.17487/RFC0020, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc20>.
[RFC7322]
Flanagan, H. and S. Ginoza, "RFC Style Guide", RFC 7322, DOI 10.17487/RFC7322, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7322>.
[RFC7564]
Saint-Andre, P. and M. Blanchet, "PRECIS Framework: Preparation, Enforcement, and Comparison of Internationalized Strings in Application Protocols", RFC 7564, DOI 10.17487/RFC7564, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7564>.
[UnicodeNorm]
The Unicode Consortium, "Unicode Standard Annex", , <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/>.

Author's Address

Paul Hoffman
ICANN