The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs
RFC 7997
| Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(December 2016; No errata)
Updates RFC 7322
Was draft-iab-rfc-nonascii (individual)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2018-12-20 | ||
| Replaces | draft-flanagan-nonascii | ||
| Stream | IAB | ||
| Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
| Stream | IAB state | Published RFC | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Yes | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
Internet Architecture Board (IAB) H. Flanagan, Ed.
Request for Comments: 7997 RFC Editor
Updates: 7322 December 2016
Category: Informational
ISSN: 2070-1721
The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs
Abstract
In order to support the internationalization of protocols and a more
diverse Internet community, the RFC Series must evolve to allow for
the use of non-ASCII characters in RFCs. While English remains the
required language of the Series, the encoding of future RFCs will be
in UTF-8, allowing for a broader range of characters than typically
used in the English language. This document describes the RFC Editor
requirements and gives guidance regarding the use of non-ASCII
characters in RFCs.
This document updates RFC 7322. Please view this document in PDF
form to see the full text.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
and represents information that the IAB has deemed valuable to
provide for permanent record. It represents the consensus of the
Internet Architecture Board (IAB). Documents approved for
publication by the IAB are not a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7997.
Flanagan Informational [Page 1]
RFC 7997 Non-ASCII in RFCs December 2016
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Basic Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Rules for the Use of Non-ASCII Characters . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. General Usage throughout a Document . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Person Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. Company Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4. Body of the Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.5. Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.6. Code Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.7. Bibliographic Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.8. Keywords and Citation Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.9. Address Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4. Normalization Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5. XML Markup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. Internationalization Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
IAB Members at the Time of Approval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Flanagan Informational [Page 2]
RFC 7997 Non-ASCII in RFCs December 2016
1. Introduction
Please review the PDF version of this draft.
For much of the history of the RFC Series, the character encoding
used for RFCs has been ASCII [RFC20]. This was a sensible choice at
the time: the language of the Series has always been English, a
language that primarily uses ASCII-encoded characters (ignoring for a
moment words borrowed from more richly decorated alphabets); and,
ASCII is the "lowest common denominator" for character encoding,
making cross-platform viewing trivial.
There are limits to ASCII, however, that hinder its continued use as
the exclusive character encoding for the Series. The increasing need
for easily readable, internationalized content suggests it is time to
allow non-ASCII characters in RFCs where necessary. To support this
move away from ASCII, RFCs will switch to supporting UTF-8 as the
default character encoding and will allow support for a broad range
of Unicode characters [UnicodeCurrent]. Note that the RFC Editor may
reject any code point that does not render adequately across all
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