Re: Proposal for additional Aliases to IANA registry of character sets

[Chris Newman <Chris.Newman@Sun.COM>]

For those character sets which are already limited-use (including the 
majority of the IBM sets), new aliases won't harm anyone as long as the 
registry clearly marks those character sets as "limited use, not for 
standards-based interoperability".

However, I do object to the following two aliases:

begin quotation by umavs@ca.ibm.com on 2002/7/29 13:16 -0400:
> Existing Iana           Existing  Alias   Proposed Alias
> Name              Name              Name
> ISO_8859-1:1987   IBM819                  IBM-819
> ANSI_X3.4-1968    IBM367                  IBM-367

These two character sets should always be called "iso-8859-1" or "us-ascii" 
when used in XML, on the Internet, or in any other context where 
interoperability is important.  The use of additional aliases for those 
character sets intended and used for widespread interoperability will 
simply reduce interoperability.  As a result the stated justification does 
not apply to these two character sets.  If anything, all names and aliases 
other than "iso-8859-1" and "us-ascii" should be deleted from the registry 
for those character sets.  Systems wishing to interoperate and be standards 
compliant should use the standard MIME-preferred names.

                - Chris