Subject: Protocol Action: Internationalization of the File Transfer Protocol to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 07:28:52 -0400

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'Internationalization of the
File Transfer Protocol' <draft-ietf-ftpext-intl-ftp-06.txt> as a
Proposed Standard.  This document is the product of the Extensions to
FTP Working Group.  The IESG contact persons are Keith Moore and Patrik
Faltstrom.

Technical Summary
 
 This document defines extensions to the File Transfer Protocol
 [RFC 959] for internationalized filenames.  This document is intended
 to meet the character set usage requirements defined in RFC 2130.
 It therefore supports UTF-8 for representation of non-ASCII filenames.
 This document does not define a mechanism for translation of the files
 themselves.

Working Group Summary

 This document has enjoyed a great deal of discussion in the working
 group.  In particular, its decision to use UTF-8 exclusively was
 somewhat controversial, because of the degree to which existing
 clients and servers are using character sets besides ASCII and EBCDIC.
 The extension described here attempts to avoid being incompatible with
 such practices.

Protocol Quality

 Keith Moore reviewed the spec for IESG.
 The document includes some sample code to assist implementors.