Re: Registration of new charset SCSU

[Kenneth Whistler <kenw@sybase.com>]

Markus,

I'm not necessarily opposed to registration of SCSU, but I think
there is a problem here.

> 
> Additional Information:
>     SCSU is a Character Encoding Scheme for Unicode/ISO 10646
>     that allows significant size reduction of text compared
>     to UCS Transformation formats. 

SCSU does not meet the definition of a "Character Encoding Scheme"
as defined in Unicode Technical Report #17, Character Encoding
Model. UTR #17 states:

"SCSU ... should also be conceived of as [a] transfer encoding
syntax. [It is] not appropriate for registration to get [a]
formal charset identifier, since the compressed forms are not
unique, but depend on the sophistication of the compression
algorithm."

I don't know whether this would absolutely disallow a charset
registration for SCSU, but we should be clear that while SCSU
*de*coding is uniquely defined, SCSU *en*coding is not.

--Ken