RFC 2277 (rfc2277) - Page 2 of 9

IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages

RFC 2277                     Charset Policy                 January 1998


2.  Where to do internationalization

   Internationalization is for humans. This means that protocols are not
   subject to internationalization; text strings are. Where protocol
   elements look like text tokens, such as in many IETF application
   layer protocols, protocols MUST specify which parts are protocol and
   which are text. [WR 2.2.1.1]

   Names are a problem, because people feel strongly about them, many of
   them are mostly for local usage, and all of them tend to leak out of
   the local context at times. RFC 1958 [RFC 1958] recommends US-ASCII
   for all globally visible names.

   This document does not mandate a policy on name internationalization,
   but requires that all protocols describe whether names are
   internationalized or US-ASCII.

   NOTE: In the protocol stack for any given application, there is
   usually one or a few layers that need to address these problems.

   It would, for instance, not be appropriate to define language tags
   for Ethernet frames. But it is the responsibility of the WGs to
   ensure that whenever responsibility for internationalization is left
   to "another layer", those responsible for that layer are in fact
   aware that they HAVE that responsibility.

3.  Definition of Terms

   This document uses the term "charset" to mean a set of rules for
   mapping from a sequence of octets to a sequence of characters, such
   as the combination of a coded character set and a character encoding
   scheme; this is also what is used as an identifier in MIME "charset="
   parameters, and registered in the IANA charset registry [REG].  (Note
   that this is NOT a term used by other standards bodies, such as ISO).

   For a definition of the term "coded character set", refer to the
   workshop report.

   A "name" is an identifier such as a person's name, a hostname, a
   domainname, a filename or an E-mail address; it is often treated as
   an identifier rather than as a piece of text, and is often used in
   protocols as an identifier for entities, without surrounding text.

3.1.  What charset to use

   All protocols MUST identify, for all character data, which charset is
   in use.




Alvestrand               Best Current Practice