[idn] UCS/UTF-8 is needed for interoperability

[Dan Oscarsson <Dan.Oscarsson@trab.se>]

There have been much talk about UTF-8 as the solution with mind
set on the client.

But the most important thing is that if we are going to make
it easy to interoperate between systems we must agree on the
format of data in the protocols.
Today it is a mess filled with lots of formats. Just look at
e-mail and MIME - just the code needed to decode or encode
a e-mail header is big and complex. That is why it is so difficult
to make programs use e-mail. Think how easy it would have been
if all header lines had used UTF-8!


We need ONE format for character data. UCS encoded as UTF-8 normalised
form C
is the best choice.

Locally in a system you will still use a local character set.
But think how easy the code will be:
- One library to handle the conversion between UCS and local charcter
set
  that can be used by all programs.
- Much simplified parsing, no embedded character set switches.

   Dan