Re: CP1252 under Unix

From: John Cowan (cowan@locke.ccil.org)
Date: Sun Mar 26 2000 - 19:29:27 EST


Frank da Cruz scripsit:

> The true question is whether IANA should have "registered" any of them.

IANA registration reflects what is the case de facto, not what ought
to be the case. As the saying is, "It doesn't take all kinds, we just
*have* all kinds."

> Again, private, proprietary character sets have no place in any standard,

This is self-evident, since "standard" and "proprietary" are contradictory.

> Does anybody who reads this list truly believe it is better to use private
> code pages for interchange than it is to use standard ones? That means I can
> send you ANYTHING AT ALL, even something you've never heard of, and it's your
> fault if you can't read it, not mine.

If no standard character set (other than Unicode/UCS) represents the characters,
what else is to be done? MIME is based on the principle of truth in labeling.

> If you are selling a Windows-based email client, HOW HARD IS IT to convert
> outgoing mail from the local code page to ISO 8859 or other standard character
> set? Ditto for Windows-based Web authoring tools. The fact that this has
> not been done is no reason for the rest of the planet to drop what they are
> doing (presumably moving us along towards a Unicode based network) and bend
> over backwards to accommodate this kind of behavior.

Arbitrarily hard if the repertoire is not covered.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin



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