Subject: #243: iso-8859-1 in C-D

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2010 12:20:12 +1100

"I still think the reference to ISO-8859-1 should be avoided (refer instead to characters not normally allowed in HTTP headers, or simply a wider repertoire of characters) ..."

According to <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-12#section-3.2>:

>    Historically, HTTP has allowed field content with text in the ISO-
>    8859-1 [ISO-8859-1] character encoding and supported other character
>    sets only through use of [RFC2047] encoding.  In practice, most HTTP
>    header field values use only a subset of the US-ASCII character
>    encoding [USASCII].  Newly defined header fields SHOULD limit their
>    field values to US-ASCII characters.  Recipients SHOULD treat other
>    (obs-text) octets in field content as opaque data.

I don't see what not specifying the character set that doesn't require encoding buys us here. 

This isn't a new header; it's a revision of an existing one, and historically (as it says), the line has been 8859-1.

Cheers,

--
Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/

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From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 02:53:29 +0100

>I don't see what not specifying the character set that doesn't require encoding buys us here. 

I think this issue can be closed; I think the document has been changed
to my satisfaction. (I do note that there is some slight inaccuracy in
the text you cite and the Content-Disposition draft: if the filename
value is a `token` instead of a quoted string, RFC 2616 does not define
the encoding of the token to be ISO-8859-1; the ISO-8859-1 language is
for words of TEXT, which are in comments in quoted strings only.)
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:[email-masked] · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 09:33:14 +0100

On 07.11.2010 02:53, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
> * Mark Nottingham wrote:
>> According to<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-12#section-3.2>:
>>

True, but token doesn't allow anything outside USASCII anyway, right?

Best regards, Julian

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From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 14:48:36 +0100

>True, but token doesn't allow anything outside USASCII anyway, right?

That is correct, yes.

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:34:18 +0100

>> True, but token doesn't allow anything outside USASCII anyway, right?

So the C-D draft currently says:

"The parameters "filename" and "filename*" differ only in that 
"filename*" uses the encoding defined in [RFC5987], allowing the use of 
characters not present in the ISO-8859-1 character set ([ISO-8859-1])."

We *could* expand this to clarify that the statement about ISO-8859-1 
refers to the quoted-string form only; but as this is only informational 
prose I'm a bit reluctant with making it more complex that strictly needed.

Are you ok with this issue being closed?

Best regards, Julian

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From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:53:37 +0100

>Are you ok with this issue being closed?

The text I meant is in appendix C.3 which begins with "Some user agents
inspect the value (which defaults to ISO-8859-1)" which is slightly in-
accurate, but I don't think it really needs to be changed, which is why
I said I think this issue can be closed, yes.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:[email-masked] · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 17:26:08 +0100

> I said I think this issue can be closed, yes.

Ah ;.)

Maybe say "(which defaults to ISO-8859-1 for the quoted-string form)"?

Best regards, Julian

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From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 17:54:50 +0100

>Maybe say "(which defaults to ISO-8859-1 for the quoted-string form)"?

I don't really care, but if you do want to change it, I'd suggest,
surprise, to get rid of ISO-8859-1 and instead just say something like
"Some user agents inspect the value and interpret it as UTF-8 encoded
string when ...".
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:[email-masked] · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 18:11:04 +0100

> "Some user agents inspect the value and interpret it as UTF-8 encoded

Currently it says

"Some user agents inspect the value (which defaults to ISO-8859-1) and 
switch to UTF-8 when it seems to be more likely to be the correct 
interpretation."

if we take out that bit it would become

"Some user agents inspect the value and switch to UTF-8 when it seems to 
be more likely to be the correct interpretation."

which then would raise the question what the correct interpretation 
actually is. And it is ISO-8859-1.

Best regards, Julian