RE: BOF

[Borka Jerman-Blazic <jerman-blazic@ijs.si>]

I do agree whith what is Harald suggesting. We need a sort of common approach
to all listed services including MIME and that is why we in Europe
decided to put this issue on the IETF agenda. We have worked in Europe on the
problem and realised that as an international community we have to come to some
common agreement acceptable to everybody. I know that the problem is very
difficult but in general we all agree that a definition of a common denominator
for the character sets support has to be worked out. We do not have any other
way (the other way can be a MESS on the Internet).i

I went very quickly over Ohta san comments on the BOF Minutes and find out 
that even he agree on the common issues to be worked out.
Please, try to be fair and try to focuss the discussion on things 
that matter and not onn "manegment" or "policy etc". 
The last Ned and John mail explain everything
we have to know about IETF WGs.


The Ohtasan remarks:

>> Identity for encoding and  decoding  which  he  >  The
>> discussion  showed  that  the  proposed solution is not in the general
> >stream of the development of the  standard  character  set  codes  and
> >their  applications  in  the  computing  systems.

>"the general stream of the development"? What's that? It was only that my
>proposal was not compatible with UCS4. It is, now.

Do you know any other scheme of development of character sets code on
international level? I do not.
i
>> He  proposed  an  extension  to  the
>> existing  UCS  code  system consisting of 5 additional bits which will
>> enable  the deficiency of the UCS coding system to be overcomed.

>> In  the  discussion  the  problem  of handling of
>> bidirectional text was also identified.

>Handling of bidirectionality is identified by me and solved in my proposal
>(1 of 5 additional bits is used only for bidirectionality). John Klensin's
>comment turned out to be a code conversion issue, later.

What is the problem with the text of the BOF?

>> He  also  recommended the use of mailing lists
>> already working within IETF.  They  are:  <ietf-charsets@innosoft.com>
>> and two others working on mailing issues (822ext and 821).

>He (John Klensin) has recommended 822ext!!!!!????? Any comment, John?

O.K. Maybe this was misunderstanding or somebody else mentioned this list,
but this is not a big issue. If the character sets support in MIME is 
discussed then we will need all these people who developed MIME to comment
I am not seeing any problem here.

>> As a summary the BOF decided to propose to IESG to consider the possi-
>> bility of setting up of a working group to work on the following work-
>> ing items:

>I have several comments.

>> - a  document defining how UCS  can  be  used  in  a  uniform  way  in
>> Internet  protocols,  especially  taking  in  consideration  the UTF-2
>> encoding  of  UCS.   The  document  will  provide  guidance  to  other
>> protocols which have to deal with these items over the  Internet,

>It was agreed to have some text encoding method based on 10646, but
>not especially UTF-2. 

It is said "taking in consideration" that does not imply that UTF-2 is
the ultimate solution.

>> -a document identifying  the languages and the characters required for
>> coding text written in  particular  natural   language 

>Yes.

>> (a  sort  of
>> guidelines   for  services dealing with multilinguality such as NIR 
>> service based on usage of plein text),

>What do you mean? Aren't you assuming MIME-like labeling of character
>sets each containing only a limited number of characters?

I do not mean anything. We just pointed out the most concerned services
based on plein text and that is all about. We did not suggest any solution!

>> -a document defining a tool for coded character sets conversion  to  be
>> provided  within  some  services  such  as e-mail user agent including
>> fall-back representation of incoming characters that are  outside  the
>> supported character repertoire of the receiver,

>Yes. Shouldn't we also address input issues for outgoing characters from
>ASCII environment?

This is contained in it implicitly.

>> -a  proposal  for  extending  the  mandatory  issues  which have to be
>> covered in the RFC standardization process to  include  character  set
>> consideration/support.

>Really? Hmmm. Good luck.

O.K. Let us try. Maybe the problem is so difficult and we will not come to
an agreement but what is your proposal?

Borka

p.s I am still on INET93 and have some difficulties in reaching my host
so please do not bomb me with comments at once.

v