Re: ignore dashes etc. (was Registration of new charset GB18030 (fwd))

[Mark Davis <mark@macchiato.com>]

> 'charset' matching was always case sensitive in the specs and in all
implementations.

"all implementations" is incorrect. It is also very cumbersome for
many implementations to keep a list of all the possible
case/hyphen/underscore variants that people *actually* use; far
simpler to just mask it out.

> Case-insensitive matching doesn't harm, as 'charset' matching was

Case-insensitivity *would* harm on input, if two aliases (for two
different code pages) were only distinguished by case. Similarly, the
only way that hyphen-insensitively would harm on input is if two
aliases for two different code pages were only distinguished by
hyphens. On output, of course, the canonical name should be used in
any event.

If we simply have a rule in registration that no two aliases (for
different two different code pages) were only distinguished by case,
hyphens, underscores, or spaces (a darn'd good rule in any event, to
prevent confusion), then those who choose to be lenient on input can
continue to do so; those who want to be strict, can.

Mark
__________
http://www.macchiato.com
◄  “Eppur si muove” ►

----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Duerst" <duerst@w3.org>
To: "Mark Davis" <mark.davis@us.ibm.com>
Cc: "charsets" <ietf-charsets@iana.org>; "Markus Scherer"
<markus.scherer@jtcsv.com>
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2002 01:36
Subject: Re: ignore dashes etc. (was Registration of new charset
GB18030 (fwd))


> At 20:41 02/07/18 -0700, Mark Davis wrote:
>
> >And what harm does it do, to make the name matching
case-insensitive --
> >especially since a great many implementations do that anyway?
>
> Case-insensitive matching doesn't harm, as 'charset' matching was
> always case sensitive in the specs and in all implementations.
>
> This is different from ignore hyphens-underscores-spaces,...,
> which is currently not mentioned in any spec.
>
> Regards,    Martin.
>