Re: RE: comments on draft-yergeau-utf8-rev2-00

[Kenneth Whistler <kenw@sybase.com>]

Paul,

> At 11:56 AM -0700 4/16/02, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
> >Perhaps, however, the Unicode Consortium should wonder the same thing
> >about the IETF, since all those RFC's are also just online documents --
> >and I am not going to find them by ISDN numbers in my reference
> >library either. ;-)

                   ^^^ <-- points to smiley

> 
> Not true. RFC 2822 is RFC 2822: it is not 
> <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt>. RFC 2822 exists in a zillion 
> places, many of them not online. For instance, I have a printed copy.

Look, I'm not trying to start a spat here. Harald simply mentioned
his distrust of a normative reference to something which was not
published as a good, solid book with an ISDN number which your
local librarian can find on a [physical] bookshelf in a brick
and mortar library. I noticed a slight irony there.

By the way, the Unicode Standard, Version 3.2 is UAX #28. It is
not <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr28/>. And while UAX #28
may not exist in a *zillion* places, since the Unicode Consortium
doesn't have the moral equivalent of RFC reflector repositories,
it certainly does exist in non-online instantiations. For instance,
I have a printed copy.

The point, I thought, was that UAX #28 doesn't have an ISDN number,
since it wasn't published as a *book*. Nor does RFC 2822.

--Ken

P.S. By the way, in case I'm being too oblique here, I'm perfectly
fine with stable references by number and title. The Unicode Standard,
Version 3.0 does just that, for example, in referencing RFC 2279
(to bring things back around on topic). It also includes, in that
reference, a URL for convenience -- and it so happens that URL is
still valid. But nobody is confusing the URL with the reference
to RFC 2279 itself.

> 
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --Internet Mail Consortium
>