Subject: Protocol Action: 'Unicode Format for Network Interchange' to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:04:33 -0800 (PST)

The IESG has approved the following document:

- 'Unicode Format for Network Interchange '
   <draft-klensin-net-utf8-09.txt> as a Proposed Standard

This document has been reviewed in the IETF but is not the product of an
IETF Working Group. 

The IESG contact person is Chris Newman.

A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-net-utf8-09.txt

Technical Summary
 
   The Internet today is in need of a standardized form for the
   transmission of internationalized "text" information, paralleling the
   specifications for the use of ASCII that date from the early days of
   the ARPANET.  This document specifies that format, using UTF-8 with
   normalization and specific line-ending sequences.
 
Working Group Summary
 
   This is the product of an individual submission but has been
   extensively reviewed and debated on the applications area
   discussion mailing list.
 
Protocol Quality
 
   There appears to be strong list consensus to move from ASCII to
   UTF-8 for canonical text (reflecting continued support for BCP 18).
   There were no objections to the selected normalization form for
   Unicode.  There was some debate about inclusion or exclusion of
   specific control codes, and some debate about the use of canonical
   CRLF line endings as is traditional in most IETF protocols vs.
   permitting multiple line endings as HTTP does.  The design
   restriction to remain backwards compatible with traditional
   ASCII NVT as well as the goal to provide an interoperable
   interchange format (rather than a transfer protocol) informed
   the current design.  The document acknowledges many participants
   who have reviewed the work and provided feedback.

   During IETF last call, two individuals expressed dissent about
   technical choices while supporting the basic goal of the document.
   The technical choices in question are the choice to make this an
   NVT superset for backwards compatibility with previous IETF
   specifications and the choice of a single canonical line ending.
   The responsible area director believes rough consensus supports
   this document as written based on positive support from the IETF
   list and the applications discuss list.  Additional non-normative
   text was added to revision -08 to further justify the latter
   decision.

   This was reviewed for the IESG by Chris Newman.

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