[NNTP] AD guidance on NNTP i18n issues

Russ Allbery rra at stanford.edu
Tue Mar 29 10:41:34 PST 2005


Charles Lindsey <chl at clerew.man.ac.uk> writes:
> Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> writes:

>> * We need to add an Internationalization Considerations section.  That
>>   section should spell out:

>>   o The current internationalization problems from an NNTP perspective,
>>     namely article data (including data taken from headers), newsgroup
>>     names, and LIST NEWSGROUPS output.

> I think you want to do that mainly by punting it to Usefor. Something like

> "It is anticipated that extensions or replacements to RFC 1036 will
> introduce I18N features, notably in connection with newsgroup-names, the
> information needed for the LIST NEWSGROUPS output etc. etc. etc. Insofar
> as these extension may make use of UTF-8, this present standard has
> hopefully made suitable provision. However, it is not precluded that
> such developmens may require further extensions to this standard."

We should say something about future work, yes, but we need to spell out
what the problems are specifically.  The above is not adequate in my
opinion, as I understand the guidance we've received and the issue,
although it's not *far* off.  I would rather specifically talk about why
those three things in particular are an issue and then talk about what
some future article standard might do later.

>>   o The current growing use of MIME for the article format, but also the
>>     substantial use of local character sets in article headers and (less
>>     commonly) untagged article bodies.

> I think you can safely point out that your standard is completely
> MIME-proof, and there is no excuse at all for untagged article
> bodies.

We should describe existing practice and *then* get proscriptive; I think
mixing the two just confuses matters.  I'd rather lay out what the
problems are and then lay out what the recommendations are to avoid future
problems, as well as mention that work remains to be done in standardizing
a solution.

>>   o The current pure-ASCII convention for newsgroup names, which is
>>     widespread but not entirely universal.

> Actually, it is _almost_ universal (even in China).

That's what I said.  :)

> Yes indeed. But be careful not to commit to any particular final
> solution.  I am sure we all believe that UTF-8 is the way to go, but we
> may not succeed in carrying the rest of the world with us.

If we're not going to commit to UTF-8 as the solution, we should clearly
state that if the solution ends up being something other than UTF-8,
further changes to the NNTP standard may also be required.  Maybe say
something along the lines of "this standard anticipates and allows for a
future standardization on UTF-8 for newsgroup names and descriptions; if
some other solution is chosen, further changes to the NNTP standard in
this area may be required."

> And the initial Usefor standard will undoubtedly stick with US-ASCII for
> newsgroup-names. So it would indeed be undesirable for the world to
> anticipate what might be in its proposed experimental I18N
> extension. But, by and large, the less that is said in this section, the
> less chance that we will turn out to have shot ourselves in the foot
> later on.

A point well-taken, although I'm not worried about descriptions of current
practice so long as they're clearly labelled as such.  We can't shoot
ourselves in the foot with that; it will be factual information regardless
of what happens (it will just hopefully become dated).

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



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