PMP> RE: IANA Charset MIB (for Printer MIB v2)

Tue Aug 6 10:51:20 EDT 2002

Hi David,

Thanks very much for your perceptive comments.

Re:  The inaccurate name of 'CodedCharSet' textual convenion:

For historic reasons (Steve Waldbusser named the textual convention
'CodedCharSet' when it was added to the Printer MIB v1 ASN.1 in 1993),
this textual convention is erroneously named.  But eight years of
shipping Printer MIB implementations from every single network
printer vendor is a lot of legacy...

We _could_ change the name in Printer MIB v2, but that should really
be decided during the IESG 'last call' on Printer MIB v2.  The new 
objects defined in Printer MIB v2 have been defined (and stable) for 
six years, while we've awaited IETF AD review and publication.

The actual documentation of the 'CodedCharSet' textual convention
(in the ASN.1) makes very clear that it tags an IANA 'charset'
which is a CCS that is (optionally) combined with a CES.

Re:  Your suggested improvements in wording in Introduction:

Bert Wijnen asked that I finish up the C language utility and
hand it over to IANA for maintenance along with the initial
version of the IANA Charset MIB.

I chose to actually issue it wrapped in an Internet-Draft for
the convenience of the community.  This I-D is _not_ intended
to be published as an RFC.  None of the other IANA maintained
MIB modules are published in an RFC.

Cheers,
- Ira McDonald, co-editor of Printer MIB v2
  High North Inc
  imcdonald at sharplabs.com

-----Original Message-----
From: David Hopwood [mailto:david.hopwood at zetnet.co.uk]
Sent: Monday, August 05, 2002 6:59 PM
To: ietf-charsets at iana.org
Subject: Re: IANA Charset MIB (for Printer MIB v2)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

"McDonald, Ira" wrote:
<ftp://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/pmp/drafts/draft-mcdonald-iana-charset-mib-00.txt
>

> Abstract
> 
>    This memo defines a portion of the Management Information Base (MIB)
>    for use with network management protocols in the Internet community.
>    In particular, it defines a single textual convention 'CodedCharSet'
>    that may be used to specify charset labels in MIB objects, for
>    example 'prtLocalizationCharacterSet' in Printer MIB v2 (RFC nnnn).
>    'CodedCharSet' was originally defined in Printer MIB v1 (RFC 1759).

A coded-character-set (CCS) is a different thing from a charset (see
for example <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr17/> or
<http://www.w3.org/TR/charmod/>). Please change the name to 'Charset',
if that would not cause too much disruption.

> 1.  Introduction
> 
>    This IANA Charset MIB module defines the single textual convention
>    'CodedCharSet'.  Once adopted, all future versions of the IANA
>    Charset MIB will be machine-generated, whenever the IANA Charset
>    Registry [CHARSET] is updated by IANA staff according to the
>    procedures defined in [RFC2978], using the utility [IANACHAR]
>    described in section 3 of this document.

Add: "IANA staff may change or replace this utility as necessary to
correct errors or take into account changes in the registry format."

- -- 
David Hopwood <david.hopwood at zetnet.co.uk>

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