Re: Registering a charset alias

[Ira McDonald <blueroofmusic@gmail.com>]

Hi Anne,

Quoting from IANA Charset Registration Procedures (RFC 2978/BCP 19):

2.3.  Naming Requirements

   One or more names MUST be assigned to all registered charsets.
   Multiple names for the same charset are permitted, but if multiple
   names are assigned a single primary name for the charset MUST be
   identified. All other names are considered to be aliases for the
   primary name and use of the primary name is preferred over use of any
   of the aliases.

   Each assigned name MUST uniquely identify a single charset.

<...>

3.1.  Present the Charset to the Community

   Send the proposed charset registration to the "ietf-
   charsets@iana.org" mailing list.  (Information about joining this
   list is available on the IANA Website, http://www.iana.org.)  This
   mailing list has been established for the sole purpose of reviewing
   proposed charset registrations. Proposed charsets are not formally
   registered and must not be used; the "x-" prefix specified in RFC
   2045 can be used until registration is complete.

   The posting of a charset to the list initiates a two week public
   review process.

IANA won't register a free-standing charset alias (there's no procedure),
but you can revise an existing charset registration.

So:
(1) You could NOT update the 'Windows-31J' and 'Big5' registrations
      to add 'x-sjis' and 'x-x-big5 aliases, because of the 'x-' prefixes.

(2) You could update 'Windows-31J' for a 'Windows-932' alias.

(3) You could NOT update the 'Windows-1252' registration to add
      'US-ASCII' (the preferred MIME name of ANSI_X3.4-1968) or
      'ISO-8859-1' (the preferred MIME name of ISO_8859-1:1987),
      because they would be ambiguous names.

Does HTML5 *really* make such an unwise suggestion about
treating US-ASCII and ISO-8859-1 as Windows-1252?

Cheers,
- Ira (editor of original IANA Charset MIB, RFC 3808)

Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
Chair - Linux Foundation Open Printing WG
Blue Roof Music/High North Inc
email: blueroofmusic@gmail.com
winter:
  579 Park Place  Saline, MI  48176
  734-944-0094
summer:
  PO Box 221  Grand Marais, MI 49839
  906-494-2434