Subject: Re: ietf-nntp Issues List version 3

From: [email-masked] (Charles Lindsey)
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 09:44:40 GMT

In local.nntp [email-masked] (Stan Barber) wrote:

>Topics for Discussion concerning "draft-ietf-nntpext-base-03.txt"

Since I am in the process of drafting some of the relevant texts for the
grandson-0f-1036, I can give you a few pointers on some of these (whether
my texts gets accepted is another matter of course - our drafting process
is at a much earlier stage than yours).

>UTF-8, keyword and verbs
>	The current draft advocates UTF-8 only be used for arguments
>	in commands (not keywords or verbs). Is this the right thing to do?
>	If not, what is the right thing to do? Is the current draft clear on
>	this? If not, suggest some alternate text to make this clearer.

My text will say that header-names (i.e. the keyword of a header line)
MUST be in ASCII.

>UTF-8 and responses
>	In the responses where a fixed format is required (like ARTICLE,
>	BODY, HEAD, and STAT), should the default be US-ASCII or UTF-8?
>	[Right now, I think this is not a problem and perhaps we should
>	just defer it until message-ids starting having 8 bit contents.]
>	What about other responses? 

Message-IDs will still be in strict ASCII. This will remain so until such
time as IETF decides to permit non-ASCII in domain names. When that
happens, there will be such a grand upheaval throughout everything that
anything we may say about it now will be totally inundated. In other
words, forget it.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing-------------------------
Email:     [email-masked]   Web:   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 1997 15:17:44 +0100

You have my support for leaving header field names and command names
as "ASCII only".
These are not text, they are part of the protocol, and are just
represented rather verbosely for easier debugging.
My way of putting it :-)

                   Harald A