Subject: [Xml-sg-cmt] When do we consider lifting the general restriction against utf-8?

From: Robert Sparks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2021 13:59:09 -0600

There have been arguments made on rfc-i that the restrictions against 
utf-8 are hurting us more than helping us.

We introduced <contact> to deal with a place where we really needed to 
let non utf-8 in, but then found that it was very useful for other reasons.

Should we, as part of the current revision effort, consider allowing 
utf-8 more universally?

If not, where's the line that defines what we should consider and not 
consider, and who defines it?

RjS

---

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Jan 2021 20:25:26 -0500

> There have been arguments made on rfc-i that the restrictions against utf-8 
> are hurting us more than helping us.
>
> We introduced <contact> to deal with a place where we really needed to let 
> non ASCII in, but then found that it was very useful for other reasons.
>
> Should we, as part of the current revision effort, consider allowing utf-8 
> more universally?

Thanks for bringing it up, a topic that was also on my list but somehow 
fell off.

It is my impression that these days that all of the systems in reasonably 
common use can display a large range of UTF-8 so there's not much reason 
to tell people not to use it.  Perhaps we should consider revising RFC 
7997 to list the contexts that require ASCII, and leave everything else to 
the reasonable discretion of the RPC.

There are a lot of places where it'd be nice to use normal math syntax, 
even without math typesetting, such as:

  a ÷ b ≥ 0 rather than a / b >= 0

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly