Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/ietf/urn/urn-archives/urn-ietf.archive.9610/000099_owner-urn-ietf _Thu Oct 24 15:27:15 1996.msg

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Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 12:26:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Gregory J. Woodhouse" <[e-mail]>
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Subject: Re: [URN] Unicode for NSS query
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It seems to me that since URNs are not just protocol elements, but also
function as user interface elements that it is not sufficient to regard the
NSS part of the URN as a string of octets. This would be fine, I suppose if
URNs only appeared in (say) HTTP requests, but since users will enter URNs
int controls in user agents, and since URNs will be published in readable
form (e.g., in bibliographies) we are forced to regard them as being
encoded in a character set (such as Unicode). I know this is basically just
a matteer of stating a tacit assumption, but I believe someone did ask why
we couldn't treat it as an octet stream.

---
Gregory Woodhouse     [e-mail]
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