* John C. Klensin: > --On Tuesday, August 25, 2020 12:30 +0200 Florian Weimer > <fw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> What's the process for reviving an IANA registry where the >> contact mailing list for additions is dead? >> >> It's for the charset registry. It requires expert review >> only, and I want to see a charset defined in an RFC added to >> it because that part was apparently missed when the RFC was >> written. (The point is to get an official name for the >> charset, to increase interoperability among implementations.) > > I'm a little confused by your question. Sorry, it looks like I was confused as well. > First, there are actually two registries that can be referred to > as charset registries, both defined in RFC 2978: > > * The "Character Sets" list at > https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets/character-sets.xhtml > > * The "Character Set Registrations" list for codes that > are in use but not defined by RFCs, listed at > https://www.iana.org/assignments/charset-reg/charset-reg.xhtml Thanks for the clarification. > If the charset name code you are interested in registering is > defined in an RFC, you are presumably want the first, but it > would be helpful for you to confirm that. The charset is currently unnamed, as far as I can see: it's the UTF-7 variant in section 5.1.3 of RFC 3501. > They both have the same expert reviewers and both reviewers are > still active in the IETF. Neither page lists a contact mailing > list (perhaps an omission that should be created). There is a > contact address listed in RFC 2978, "ietf-charsets@xxxxxxxx". > If that address is no longer working, I recommend you contact > iana@xxxxxxxx and ask them what it going on as doing so will > generate a ticket in the appropriate system. Yes, I think this is already being taken care of. > Second, allow me to ask a substantive question: at the time the > registry was created, there were many charsets in use (and more > being added). Today, there is little excuse for using anything > but Unicode in one of its three standardized encoding forms. > Unless there are circumstances I don't understand, adding and > using an additional charset is likely to decrease > interoperability, not increase it. So, while RFC 2978 is quite > permissive and you only need to convince the experts, in the > interest of interoperability, could you explain which RFC is > involved and a bit about what is going on here? The charset is already defined and widely implemented. It's a transformation format of Unicode. It's just presently unnamed. Having a standardized name for it would help implementing support in the POSIX iconv framework.
