Re: Does the Charset Registry still function?

[Martin Duerst <duerst@w3.org>]

Hello Mark,

At 13:59 03/04/30 -0700, Mark Davis wrote:
>I sent in a question on April 22 to the registrar, and as yet see no
>answer.

'a question' is a very big understatement. It was a long list of
questions, with additional material outside your mail.
Also, please be aware of the fact that 'the registrar' is
just a secretarial function, they don't have the necessary
technical knowledge to answer such questions.

I had a look at the questions, and the outside material, and
I think that all your questions make sense, and should be answered
by this list. But I was just overwhelmed by the number of questions,
and had no idea where to start. (also, I was on a trip) So I gave up.

While I think that most of the questions you ask make sense, I think
you should be aware that the answers may not be straightforward.
Many of these questions just haven't been considered up to now.

Also, you should be aware that, at least between updates to the
relevant registration documents (RFC), this list (and similar ones)
work in some sense similar to (UK or US) case law. I.e. if you want
an answer to a question, you have to bring a case that exhibits this
question (i.e. an actual registration). While this is not a hard-and-
fast condition for discussion on this list, it clearly makes
discussion easier.


>IBM is in the position of needing to register perhaps hundreds of
>charsets, and we need better information before we start; otherwise we
>could end up with either redundant registrations or missing charsets.
>
>BTW, the only mail archive I could find was on
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-charsets/2003AprJun/subject.html,
>but that archive is full of spam. Is there a better source?

Sorry about that. I thought this had been dealt with, apparently
it hasn't. I'll try to have it fixed.

Regards,    Martin.



>Mark
>
>==========
>Previous Message:
>==========
>
>Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 11:32:06 -0700
>From: Mark Davis <mark.davis@jtcsv.com>
>To: ietf-charsets@iana.org
>Message-id: <00c801c308fd$7a88a730$7900a8c0@DAVIS1>
>Subject: Charset Identity and Registration Questions
>
>We have a number of questions about the application of RFC 2978 that
>are
>important for resolving which charsets IBM should register. Since this
>is
>much easier with a formatted document instead of plaintext email,
>there is a
>formatted document with the questions at the following address:
>
>http://oss.software.ibm.com/cvs/icu/~checkout~/icuhtml/design/charset_questi
>ons.html
>....