[rfc-i] comments on "Format FAQ"
paul.hoffman at vpnc.org
Wed Feb 19 10:12:21 PST 2014
On Feb 19, 2014, at 9:53 AM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke at gmx.de> wrote:
> On 2014-02-19 18:42, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 03:44:30PM +0100, Julian Reschke wrote:
>>> Not really? Why does the encoding matter, as long as it is a common
>>> one and declared properly?
>> Not every format has a mechanism to declare the encoding.
>> I think it was primarily the simplicity of the tools that led to the
>> selection of only UTF-8 for cases where the file can declare. Also,
>> if we don't insist on UTF-8 then we'll need to have an argument about
>> BOM and UTF-16, and that would be boring.
> I'd say the Production Center can accept anything the want. If somebody submits a UTF-16 plain text, or an XML file using ISO-8859-1, where's the problem as long as the Production Center can use it?
> The only interesting question is encodings in the canonical and the derived publication formats.
+1 on both counts. There are humans in the Production Center who, when faced with a file whose encoding they can't determine automatically, can ask the humans who generated the file what it was. Making encoding restrictions for input to the RFC Editor helps almost no one, it just makes us feel proud to be picky.
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