Hi Bob and Tom, Wednesday (30 July 1997)
The source of Tom's 'International Considerations' section for new RFCs
is RFC 2130 (April 1997) 'Report of the IAB Character Set Workshop',
which calls for a section on 'Multilingual Considerations' (see below).
The relevant recommendations from RFC 2130 (for IPP, JMP, and/or PMP)
are excerpted below. Important spots are highlighted with leading '>>'.
Cheers,
- Ira McDonald
** From RFC 2130 **
8.1: To the IAB
There were a number of recommendations to the IAB about making the
standards process more aware of the need for character set
interoperability, and about the framework itself.
>> A: The IAB should trigger the examination of all RFCs to determine
>> the way they handle character sets, and obsolete or annotate the
>> RFCs where necessary.
>> B: The IESG should trigger the recommendation of procedures to the
>> RFC editor to encourage RFCs to specify character set handling if
>> they specify the transmission of text.
<...snip...>
D: Full ISO 10646 has a sufficiently broad repertoire, and scope for
further extension, that it is sufficient for use in Internet
Protocols (without excluding the use of existing alternatives).
There is no need for specific development of character set standards
for the Internet.
<...snip...>
>> I: Application protocol RFCs SHOULD include a section on
>> "Multilingual Considerations".
>> J: Application Protocol RFCs SHOULD indicate how to transfer 'on the
>> wire' all characters in the character sets they use. They SHOULD also
>> specify how to transfer other information that applications may need
>> to know about the data.
8.2: For new Internet protocols
New protocols do not suffer from the need to be compatible with old
>> 7-bit pipes. New protocol specifications SHOULD use ISO 10646 as the
>> base charset unless there is an overriding need to use a different
>> base character set.
New protocols SHOULD use values from the IANA registries when
referring to parameter values. The way these values are carried in
the protocols is protocol dependent; if the protocol uses RFC-822-
like headers, the header names already in use SHOULD be used.
For protocols with only a single choice for each component, the
protocol should use the most general specification and should be
specified with reference to the registered value in the protocol
standard.
>> Protocols SHOULD tag text streams with the language of the text.