Re: New UTF-7 draft

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

I have not read the new draft yet.  This is mostly a procedural
comment.

David, as we have discussed privately, the _experimental_
question of whether Unicode and some encoding for it are
appropriate (unmodified and without further qualification/
profiling) for broad-based internet use is separable from the
similar question about 10646.  For Unicode, one of the important
questions is whether it is comprehensive enough in terms of
characters represented and distinctions made.  For 10646, one
opens up, as Ohta-san has pointed out, all of the problems of
dealing with an extensible standard/family of standards and the
special one of dealing with one of those when the extension
model is not yet established (we at least know the extensibility
parameters for 2022).

Ohta-san, David is proposing an experiment right now, not a
standards-track document.  Experiments are much more the IETF
way of doing things than arguments from logic and theory.  There
is no applicability statement proposed that says "use this";
there is no plan at the moment to push the thing onto the
standards track.   The _experiment_ will either succeed or fail,
both in terms of who decides to use it and in terms of what
problems they do (or don't) run into.

Even if we wanted to, there is no mechanism for either of us to
prevent him from proposing that experiment and carrying it out.
<From the standpoint of [my understanding of] your position, the
best thing to do would be to focus on getting his proposals to
be as clear and precise as possible so that the results can be
objectively analyzed.

    john