Re: [xml-dev] RE: Encoding charset of HTTP Basic Authentication

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

On 01/02/2012 14:44, Tei wrote:
> On 1 February 2012 13:08, David Lee<dlee@calldei.com>  wrote:
> ...
>> Encoding still is a hard problem but I can't accept that Ignorance was the
>> cause of it missing from the HTTP specs.
>>
> Using ascii was a adecuate solution. Solved the problem at the time,
> for the people that needed a solution. Maybe not for everyone forever,
> but that can be solved by new protocols.
>
Well, for some of the people that needed a solution, anyway.

More to the point, the Europeans were locked in debate over ideal 
standards like X.400 and ODA that solved every requirement under the 
sun, while the Americans just hacked together something that worked; and 
most of the Americans had never met anyone with an umlaut in their name. 
Cheap and cheerful won the day, and we are all still paying the price.

Michael Kay
Saxonica