Re: URL internationalization!

Yergeau;

> >Perhaps, you have never used WWW browsers yet, but, those of us
> >who have know that we don't need URL human readable unless it
> >is keyboarded, transcribed or mailed.
> 
> Those of us who have long used, and even written, browsers, know that the=
> y
> are used very often to submit forms.  We also know that these forms can
> contain arbitrary characters, for instance when one types one's name.

You have a very limited experience with forms.

I won't accept your name in Arabic script, Devanagali script,
Hanzi script nor non-ASCII Latin-1 script, in my forms.

On the other hand, I do accept names in Kanji script if my form
is for Japan local.

> We
> also know that upon submission the content of the form is encoded in an
> URL, in a contraption called the query part.

Why do you think URL allow "%" notation?

> We also know that servers
> have problems dealing with such URLs, because the character encoding
> outside ASCII is undefined by the current Proposed Standard.

Using ASCII only is the only reasonable way to handle the
Internaitonalized forms and is the best default.

Servers know the internal format of the form and have no difficulty
to properly decode pure ASCII (maybe with %) URL of localized
forms.

> Hence we ha=
> ve
> concluded long ago

No, we haven't.

> that internationalized, non-ASCII URLs are an
> unavoidable requirement of a *World Wide* Web,

As long as the receiver of the form can receive and recognize some
local scripts, he may allow senders use some localized encoding
of some local script in the form. Then, % notation of URLs is just fine.

But, the default charset of internationalized form can't be
anything other than ASCII.

Otherwise, the receiver can't recognize the form.

> Mail is a non-issue,

And form is a non-issue.

> Fran=E7ois Yergeau <[email protected]>

Could you stop using strange local characters for the international
discussion?

						Masataka Ohta