RE: MIBenum value for ISO-10646-J-1?

[McDonald Ira <imcdonald@sharplabs.com>]

Hi,

Relative to Bruce's suggestion that the 40 character restriction
in names applies only to MIBs:

(1) MIBs in both SMIv1 and SMIv2 have always supported the ASN.1
    standard maximum of 63 characters for identifiers

(2) But, due to underlying linker restrictions, _many_ MIB compilers
    truncate identifiers at 31 characters (or arbitrarily rewrite
	them after about 25 characters)

(3) So 40 characters isn't a helpful restriction for MIB names.

Cheers,
- Ira (editor of IANA Charset MIB and Printer MIB v2)


Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
Blue Roof Music / High North Inc
PO Box 221  Grand Marais, MI  49839
phone: +1-906-494-2434
email: imcdonald@sharplabs.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Lilly [mailto:blilly@erols.com]
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 9:35 PM
To: ietf-charsets@iana.org
Cc: Markus Scherer
Subject: Re: MIBenum value for ISO-10646-J-1?


On Fri December 3 2004 12:53, Markus Scherer wrote:

> There are also charset names in the list that are longer than the stated
maximum of 40

I believe that that maximum refers only to names used with MIBs; RFC
2978 (the registration procedures) and its predecessors and normative
references (2047, 2184) mention no length limit on the MIME-compatible
charset names; the ABNF specifies a minimum of 1 character in the name,
but there is no upper bound.

> PS: There is no requirement for aliases. In fact, aliases are discouraged.
The cs* alias is always 
> implicitly there, see the registration RFC.

RFC 2978 section 2.3 (3rd paragraph) explicitly requires a cs* alias. It
predicted that IANA would assign such an alias if missing.  When next
revised, the registration procedure RFC should include an IANA
considerations section (as all RFCs are now supposed to do) which
directs IANA to do so.