Subject: UTF-8 or US-ASCII in RFC 822bis?

From: Pete Loshin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 19:57:26 -0400

OK. I've just been poring over some RFCs and I-Ds, and was wondering.
Here's what "Internet Message Format Standard"
(http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-drums-msg-fmt-07.txt)
says about character sets:

2.1. General Description

At the most basic level, a message is a series of characters. A message 
that is conformant with this standard is comprised of characters with 
values in the range 1 through 127 and interpreted as US-ASCII characters 
[ASCII]. For brevity, this document sometimes refers to this range of 
characters as simply "US-ASCII characters".

And here's what RFC 2277, "IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages"
(BCP-18) says about character sets:

3.1.  What charset to use

   All protocols MUST identify, for all character data, which charset is
   in use.

   Protocols MUST be able to use the UTF-8 charset, which consists of
   the ISO 10646 coded character set combined with the UTF-8 character
   encoding scheme, as defined in [10646] Annex R (published in
   Amendment 2), for all text.

So, my question is, what's going on? Is 822bis going to support UTF-8,
as it is supposed to do (at least, according to the way I read RFC
2277)? Or is there some reason not to support UTF-8 that I don't know
about? Or am I missing something somewhere, and it really does support
UTF-8?

Any explanations or clarifications would be most welcome.

Thanks!
-pl

+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Loshin         <[email-masked]>       +1 781/646-6318 |
|                                                             |
| _IPv6 Clearly Explained_ Morgan Kaufmann January 1999       |
| _TCP/IP Clearly Explained_ 3rd ed Morgan Kaufmann June 1999 |
|                                                             |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 20:17:07 +1000

Date:        Wed, 12 May 1999 19:57:26 -0400
    From:        Pete Loshin <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | So, my question is, what's going on? Is 822bis going to support UTF-8,
  | as it is supposed to do (at least, according to the way I read RFC
  | 2277)? Or is there some reason not to support UTF-8 that I don't know
  | about?

drums is limited to updating the current mail standards (821 and 822).
That is, writing what is written in a clearer way, getting rid of those
parts which aren't used, etc.

New functionality is expressly forbidden - supporting UTF-8 would be
new functionality, and hence cannot be a part of the drums output.

Expanding 822bis into alternate character sets is work for another working
group.

kre

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 May 1999 12:44:01 -0400

>    Amendment 2), for all text.

We aren't producing a new protocol. We're re-specifying an old
one. All DRUMS exists to do is to combine the dozen odd specs that
have updated the original 821/822 standard and turn it into a new,
unified and clear document.

RFC's 821 and 822 date from a long time before Unicode existed, and
existing mail systems don't use Unicode for that reason. If you would
like to go around the world and replace every SMTP MTA and every MUA
at once and get back to us about it, please do.

Perry

---

From: "D. J. Bernstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: 17 May 1999 08:22:40 -0000

Pete Loshin writes:
> Or is there some reason not to support UTF-8 that I don't know about?

The DRUMS document authors are saving a lot of time by pretending that
text is 7-bit. You'll save a lot of time by ignoring them and talking to
your MUA implementor directly.

---Dan