Subject: [[email-masked]: Last Call: UTF-16, an encoding of ISO 10646 to Proposed]

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 01:38:42 +0200

> The IESG has received a request to consider UTF-16, an encoding of ISO
> 10646 <draft-hoffman-utf16-04.txt> as Proposed Standard. This has
> been reviewed in the IETF but is not the product of an IETF Working
> Group.
> 
> The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
> final comments on this action.  Please send any comments to the
> [email-masked] or [email-masked] mailing lists by September 13, 1999.
> 
> Files can be obtained via
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-hoffman-utf16-04.txt

Here is my response to last call on UTF-16 draft

I appreciate the draft and I agree to the purpose of
registering the MIME-charsets UTF-16 UTF-16LE and UTF-16BE.

But I have some objections to publishing it as an RFC in its
current form.

1. The RFC should not be standards track, but rather an informative RFC.
IETF should not define character sets normatively, and I believe
this was actually set as an IAB policy some years ago.

2. Instead RFCs on charset should refer to the normative
specifications defining the charsets, and to refer to 
ISO specifications whenever possible. The draft gives preference
to an industry standard (Unicode) where the ISO standard (10646)
gives the same specification, and should be preferred over the industry
standard. This would be in line with how other charsets are defined,
for example the ISO 8859 series, where the preceding and technically
equivalent ECMA standards are not referenced. I think it is appropiate,
though, to mention the Unicode standard the first time the ISO
standard is introduced. The charsets should be defined with reference
to the ISO standard, and not do its own definition. An explanation
(but not definition) of the standard could be appropiate.

3. Referencing the ISO standard would also mean that ISO terminology
should be used in the draft. In the current draft a mixture of
ISO and Unicode terminology, together with newly invented terminology
is used, furthering the confusion about charset concepts.

4. The draft mentions UTF-8 being variable width, and does not mention
that UTF-16 is also variable-width. I think it woul be prudent to
also mention that UTF16 is variable width, the reader could get
the impression that UTF-16 is not variable width.

5. ISO/IEC 19646 has recently adapted more than 12 amendments,
so the references section may be updated in this respect.
But anyway that note will be inaccurate when new amendments are
approved.

I am willing to assist to reword the draft along the lines
stipulated above.

Best regards
Keld Simonsen