[Ietf-calsify] Status of simplification work

[Mark Crispin]

On Wed, 31 May 2006, Oliver Block wrote:
> The point is: either there are reasons to fold at 75 (or less) or there 
> are no reasons for that. If there are reasons the rule should be kept 
> IMHO.

It is up to the proponents of removing folding to demonstrate that there 
is no reason to fold.

Put another way, it is necessary to prove that nobody depends upon folding 
now; and furthermore that no individual, who is not privy to this 
discussion, will in good faith create an application which depends upon 
folding based upon current documents.

Without such proof, the question is moot.  It seems to me that the 
concensus of experienced protocol implementors is that it is not 
particularly difficult to fold, even when UTF-8 is involved.

> It could be extended that UTF-8 characters SHOULD NOT be folded between
> multibyte characters.

Perhaps you should have meant to say something to the effect against 
folding in the middle of a multi-octet UTF-8 character.  But that isn't 
what you said.

You can always fold between characters; the prohibition is on folding in 
the middle of a character.

Also, character != octet != byte.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.