Yung-Fong Tang wrote:
> > 4) The UTF-8 RFC says "UTF-8" is the "charset" for the MIME, but I see
> > "UNICODE-1-1-UTF-7" and "UNICODE-1-1-UTF-8" all over the net for the
> > MIME type.
>
> Interesting... "all over the net" ? I appreciate if you can point me
> to such place. We have hard time to find any Unicode document on the
> net.
Well... People need the tools *first*. The new browsers/e-mail program
support Unicode. Old ones did/do not, so few people can use Unicode
on "the net" as yet. When Unicode-savvy browsers/etc. are more common
we will see more Unicode on the net.
Actually Netscape (and Microsoft) can help in this respect. Rather
that looking around and seeing very little Unicode, drawing the
false conclusion that Unicode is only of a small multilingual interest
(which is the way Netscape seems to see it, judging from their
latest Unicode conference papers), one should take the approach of
"Unicode for everyone". Compare NewtonOS, Windows NT/CE, Rhapsody.
First we need "readers" (browsers, e-mail readers, "news" readers)
and "writers" (html & e-mail composition programs) that can handle
Unicode, and have those tools widespread. This is happening now.
Later on Unicode (and 8bit transfer!) should be the **default** encoding
used by "writers". Getting something else should require a *conscious
effort* from the (human) writer, preferably for *each* message/etc.
That could be done a few years (2-3) from now. *THEN* we will see
a flurry of messages, ""news"" and web pages using Unicode text.
/kent k
PS
Please DO NOT use UTF-7!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:36 EDT