[NNTP] Internationalisation

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Russ Allbery said:
>> First draft. Comments welcome.
> I think you might be trying a bit too hard here to not put any constraints
> on anything.

I was trying to describe the situation as I saw it.

> I think we can be more succinct and a little stronger.  I'll
> try to do this on a line-by-line basis, but to sum up, I think we can say:
[...]

This bit moved down.

>>    10.1  Introduction and historical situation

> Agree with Charles that a ", although in practice all known NNTP
> implementations are 8-bit clean" wouldn't be out of line here.

Added.

> >    bit character sets in article bodies, and still others have gone for
> >    a combination of MIME and UTF-8.
> 
> I wouldn't mention UTF-8 here.  There's very little use of UTF-8 in
> practice on Usenet, and what little there is is in bodies and is tagged
> via MIME and therefore already covered by the MIME reference.

This paragraph is intended to cover both headers and body. MIME doesn't
imply UTF-8, and I wanted some mention of the latter in this survey of the
current situation.

> >    10.2  This specification
> 
> >    Part of the role of this present specification is to eliminate this
> >    confusion and promote interoperability as far as possible.  At the
> >    same time, it is necessary to accept the existence of the present
> >    situation and not gratuitously break existing implementations and
> >    arrangements, even if they are less than optimal.  Therefore current
> >    practice has been taken into consideration while in producing this
> >    specification.

Are you suggesting dropping this paragraph? It expresses the principles
used in making the decisions we have made. I think something like it
belongs here, though it could go at the end of 10.1.

> >    The NNTP itself is extended from US-ASCII [ANSI1986] to UTF-8
> >    [RFC3629] in this specification.  Except in the specific areas
> >    discussed below, UTF-8 (which is a superset of ASCII) is mandatory
> >    and implementations MUST NOT use any other encoding.
> 
> This is a bit too chatty, I think.  I would say something like:
> 
>     This standard extends NNTP from US-ASCII [ANSI1986] to UTF-8
>     [RFC3629], and for most portions of the protocol, UTF-8 (which is a
>     superset of ASCII) is mandatory and implementations MUST NOT use any
>     other encoding.

"most portions" is weak; I want to be explicit that the *only* deviations
from UTF-8 are listed here.

>     For article headers and bodies, use of MIME is
>     strongly recommended.  However, given widely divergent existing
>     practices, an attempt to require all NNTP data meet a particular
>     encoding and tagging standard at this time would be premature and
>     unsuccessful.
> 
>     Accordingly, this protocol allows arbitrary 8-bit data in article
>     headers, article bodies, and newsgroup descriptions, subject to the
>     following recommendations:
> 
> and then insert my text from above.
> 
>  o The character set of article bodies SHOULD be tagged in the article
>    headers via some mechanism such as [MIME].
[...]

I hacked it around a bit but used it as a basis.

> Do we really need to allow deviation in HELP text?  I would tend to just
> require it be UTF-8 and not worry about it.

Well, when we first looked at this issue (a couple of years ago, I think)
we decided not to make a decision. But I have no problem with changing this
(and, given the new stronger stance on I18N, it's probably the right thing
to do). It involves some consequential changes outside 10.2 (e.g. in the
syntax).

> >    10.3  Outstanding issues
> 
> >    10.3.1  Article format
> 
> >    While the primary use of NNTP is for transmitting articles that
> >    conform to RFC 1036 [RFC1036] (Netnews articles), it is also used for
> >    other formats (see Appendix A).  It is therefore most appropriate
> >    that internationalisation issues related to article formats be
> >    addressed in the relevant specifications.  For Netnews articles, this
> >    is any successor to RFC 1036.  For email messages, it is RFC 2822
> >    [RFC2822].
> 
> >    Of course, any article transmitted via NNTP needs to conform to this
> >    specification as well.
> 
> This seems fine.
> 
> >    10.3.2  Newsgroup names and descriptions
> 
> I would drop most of this section;
[...]

Okay.

> I would instead have a 10.3.2 section entitled Canonicalization that says
> something like:
[...]

I've mostly done this, but kept the existing title and kept a note about
descriptions.

> Thank you very much for doing a first draft!  I hope this is helpful.

It is. New text will be circulated soon.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
Internet Expert     | Home:  <clive at davros.org>  | Fax:    +44 870 051 9937
Demon Internet      | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646
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