[OT] stateless vs universal (was: Re: the well-known address approach)

[Masataka Ohta <mohta@necom830.hpcl.titech.ac.jp>]

D. J. Bernstein;

This message is of topic, except that ND and Unicode share similar
chaos.

>    * ``Instead of specifying a universal character set, let's have every
>      piece of text tagged with its character set!''

Right.

However...

> Taking away layers of indirection isn't always a good idea, but it's
> inherently self-limiting. Madness lies in the opposite direction, where
> people keep adding unnecessary layers of indirection. Examples:

The fundamental cause of the chaos is to invent terminology, such
as "stateless autoconfiguration" or "universal character set",
without defining its meaning.

>    * ``Instead of specifying a universal character set, let's have every
>      piece of text tagged with its character set!''

In Unicode case, there is no definition on "a universal character
set".

As a result, extra tagging, such as a language tag, is added,
as an imprecise alternative of script tagging, if you want to
use Unicode in universal, international, environment.

As we gain more experience, it becomes more and more obvious that
ISO 2022, which was denied because it were not universal, is the
mechanism for "universal character set", just as DHCP, which
was denied because it were not stateless, is the mechanism for
"stateless autoconfiguration".

							Masataka Ohta
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