At 14:27 10/09/2008, Thomas Narten wrote:
Danny Younger <dannyyounger@yahoo.com> writes:
Now, we can say that almost all the IETF standards are Unicode-able.
This is a _very_ optimistic thing to say, as it suggests that "we are almost done". Bottom line: Internationalization of application protocols is a case-by-case issue. Each applications needs to do a self-evaluation to see whether it can handle internationalized characters. It's not just a a simple "they can use UTF-8". There are plenty of application protocols that forbid non-ascii to be used (or where the deployed base chokes if non-ascii appears). So it takes real work and thinking to transition to a system where those protocols are fully internationalized. Email is just a rather prominent example.
See the thread with a subject of "IETF.org does its part on internationalization" at http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/thrd2.html for a timely message that adds detail to this.
Also, add to what Thomas says that Internationalisation (the equivalent of everyone using International English and quoting large chunks in his/her own language) is not the multilingualisation that people expect (that every language and scri^pt is supported the same way as ASCII English is). There is a very limited practical difference between Internationalization and Multilingualisation for en English thinker, what does not make them easy to understand, analyse, systemize, and document Multilingualisation. This is one of the reason of my yesterday appeal on the matter to the IESG (http://ml-dns.org/ml-dns-appeal.pdf). We need to find a good solution to enhance IETF to the systemic complexity of the world diversity support. This is true for languages, but for many other issues as well. This is vital when one starts (as we currently do more an more, based on the DNS and its problems like security) working at the Semantic strata. jfc