Re: Revised proposal for UTF-16

[Dan Kegel <dank@alumni.caltech.edu>]

At 01:32 PM 5/24/98 -0700, Chris Newman wrote:
>We should forbid use of little-endian UTF-16 in IETF protocols.  Otherwise
>we risk giving the community which opposes Unicode some legitimate
>ammunition to fight it.

Perhaps a middle ground, here?  How about this (suitably reworded):
   UTF-16 generators SHOULD [MUST?] NOT send in little-endian byte order, but
   if they do, they MUST prefix the stream with a little-endian BOM.
   UTF-16 consumers MUST assume the default byte-order is big-endian,
   but MUST also accept little-endian if prefixed with a little-endian BOM.

That way, big-endian is preferred, yet interoperability is preserved.

- Dan