RE: DisplayString in guidelines 4.6.1.4 and Appendix D

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

On Wed, 12 Feb 2003, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
> I can live with your new text.
> I have only one more remark. That is that we also have
> (I believe it is RFC2277) a rule that says that strings
> that are intended for use by humans MUST be internationalized.
> So someone cannot just claim that "oh this will only be used for
> US ASCII characters).

Then let's say so explicitly.  That would mean the proposal gets
modified to this:

(a) leave DisplayString in the list of TCs mentioned in 4.6.1.4,
    but add mention of Utf8String and LongUtf8String.
(b) leave DisplayString in the list of "Commonly Used TCs" in
    Appendix D, but add a second note under the list of TCs from
    SNMPv2-TC:

   Note 1.  InstancePointer is obsolete and MUST NOT be used.
   Note 2.  DisplayString does not support internationalized text.
            It MUST NOT be used for objects that are required to
            hold internationalized text (which is always the case
            if the object is intended for use by humans [RFC2277]).
            Designers SHOULD consider using SnmpAdminString,
            Utf8String, or LongUtf8String for such objects.

(c) Add the following to Appendix D, right below SnmpAdminString:

   The following TCs are defined in SYSAPPL-MIB [RFC2287]:

   Utf8String                  OCTET STRING (SIZE (0..255))
   LongUtf8String              OCTET STRING (SIZE (0..1023))

(d) Add the following normative references:

[RFC2277]   Alvestrand, H., "IETF Policy on Character Sets and
            Languages", BCP 18, RFC 2277, January 1998.

[RFC2287]   Krupczak, C. and J. Saperia, "Definitions of System-Level
            Managed Objects for Applications", RFC 2287, February 1998.

Comments?

//cmh