Feel, not sell!

From: Martin J. Duerst (mduerst@ifi.unizh.ch)
Date: Thu Jun 05 1997 - 16:40:34 EDT


On Thu, 5 Jun 1997, Chris Newman wrote:

> I can easily revise the specification to remove all those comments and
> "sell it" as an encoding layer applied above UTF-8. I have no problems
> with requiring the MLSF be downconverted to UTF-8 prior to passing it to a
> "pure" UTF-8 processor.

It's not a question of selling. It's a question of look and feel.
And the fact that you have to speak about "pure" UTF-8 is a big
indication of this problem. There is only one UTF-8, and MLSF,
independently of how it is sold, is endangering this.

> > Furthermore, I find it also alarming that it proposes a new MIME charset.
>
> I'm not sure why. The spec is very clear on it's intended use (for
> mixed-language text). FYI, I ran the proposal by the co-author of MIME
> and he likes it a lot. UTF-7 is far more damaging to MIME than MLSF.

[slight sarcasmus on]
Why so? UTF-7 may be damaging to MIME because it shows that the
MIME restrictions on text are outdated. But that would only
say something about MIME, not about UTF-7.
[sarcasmus off]

Regards, Martin.



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