Multilingual plain text

[Masataka Ohta <mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp>]

> Unfortunately, we don't seem to have consensus in the community that
> multilingual messages -- in MIME terms, single body parts containing
> text in more than one language -- are "plain text".

The attempt to define MIME charset for UNICODE to have text/plain
UNICODE message shows that there is consensus that plain UNICODE text
is plain text.

So, the fact that BMP of ISO 10646 is an abbreviation of "Basic
Multilingual Plane" is the evidence that we have consensus.

Multilingual text is plain.

I'm glad that the issue is settled without any untechnical debate this
time.

						Masataka Ohta

PS

If BMP is not enough, the following are small part of excerpt of
advertising material from Unicode Inc. on multilinguality.

	Unicode Announces Availability of Its Multilingual
	Text and Character Encoding Standards.

	Unicode Inc. is a Consortium of major computer companies
	dedicated to maintaining and promoting a worldwide 16-bit
	standard for multilingual text and character encoding.

	This standard makes multilingual software easier to write,
	informations systems easier to manage and international
	information exchange more practical.

	UNICODE CONSORTIUM ANNOUNCES MERGER OF MULTILINGUAL STANDARDS