Re: Metaquestion on this group

[John C Klensin <KLENSIN@INFOODS.UNU.EDU>]

>Hi. I have been reading this group since may 93, but I would like to know
>what I am doing... I seem to remember having heard that something would
>be done to work on the character sets issue, and I was thinking that this
>is the 'official' place. But a look at the list of ietf wgs did not produce
>any evidence.

Alain,

One reasonably good answer is "we are working on it".  Perhaps a
better one is that the discussion itself is useful.  We
generally don't create IETF WGs to study problems, we create
them with charters that contain specific objectives.  The recent
discussions about 10646 and Unicode, and the eventual conclusion
to make a MIME registration around the latter and try to gain
enough experience that IETF can evaluate the "needs to be
profiled"/ "doesn't need to be profiled" debate are, IMO,
illustrative that useful things are happening here.

So something is being done, and you, and other participants in
this list, are doing it.  For something to be done of a
standardization nature, we need:
  -- a clear indication of need
  -- at least the framework of a proposal
  -- a chair (or co-chair) who can demonstrate adequate IETF
      perspective and management skills.
  -- an editor (or more than one)
  -- an adequate definition of constituency.
We are examining, but holding, partial proposals that so far
meet some subset of these requirements.   Those requirements are
necessary conditions, but not sufficient ones.  For example,
since IESG tries to avoid being party to situations in which an
idea that has been rejected by other standards bodies is carried
around in the hope that *someone* will endorse it, a proposal
that had that appearance would receive additional scrutiny.

   --john
   (Wearing the Applications AD hat)