Re: Comments on <draft-ietf-acap-mlsf-00.txt>?

From: Tony Harminc (tzha0@juts.ccc.amdahl.com)
Date: Thu Jun 05 1997 - 18:14:15 EDT


On 5 Jun 97 at 11:10, Glenn Adams wrote:

> 5. MLSF is restricted to use (i.e., defined in the context of) UTF-8 as an
> interchanged character encoding scheme (CES). As such, it is not suitable for use
> with other CESs (e.g., UTF-7 or UTF-16) and it is not suitable for use as
> a process code (internal representation) unless UTF-8 is the process code.

This is the problem for me. The MLSF proposal seems to me to
entrench UTF-8, and I have little good to say about UTF-8. It is
pretty clear from the description of UTF-8 that it was intended as a
compatibility measure for file systems that for whatever reasons
cannot tolerate certain characters, and to allow UCS-supporting
software to accept old-style ASCII arguments (file names and the
like). I find it hard to believe that anyone is using UTF-8 as a
process code (doubtless someone will speak up :-)), and yet MLSF
would seem to require translation into some sort of internal markup
if UCS-n (or anything else except UTF-8) is used as the process code.

I fondly hope that UTF-8 will go away sooner rather than
later. Obviously not everyone agrees, but I don't like the idea of a
new standard entrenching a not-universally-popular old one.

Tony Harminc



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