Re: Fwd: I-D ACTION:draft-hoffman-utf16-03.txt

[Paul Hoffman / IMC <phoffman@imc.org>]

At 03:15 PM 5/3/99 -0700, Chris Newman wrote:
>Before this goes to last call, I just wanted to say that permitting
>multiple byte orderings in this context has a high probability of leading
>to interoperability problems similar to past problems caused by permitting
>multiple endian orders in a protocol.

Note that only UTF-16 has this problem; UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE do not have 
multiple byte orderings. Because of this, I believe that most systems will 
try to use BE and LE.

>(4) If UTF-16 has interoperability problems, it will just strengthen
>support for UTF-8 and RFC 2277.  Since I think UTF-8 is a better solution
>in most cases anyway, I see little merit in fighting to make UTF-16 more
>attractive.

I fully agree with both sentences.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium