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Some discussion of requirements, goals, and desires around non-ASCII characters are at https://www.rfc-editor.org/rse/wiki/doku.php?id=formatreq. The table below summarizes a taxonomy of cases where (non-ASCII) UTF-8 might or might not be allowed, along with some thoughts. The intent is that each row represents a separate policy decision.
We expect that any case we mark “Yes” for Consensus will also require providing an ASCII-only transliteration unless we explicitly note otherwise.
Case | Section | Use | Consensus | Comments | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1a | (title page) | Author name | Yes | Answer should match (6a) | |
1b | (title page) | Author affiliation | Yes | Answer should match (6b) | |
1c | (title page) | Document title | No? | ||
2 | Abstract | Prose | No? | Could be same as (3e), but Abstracts may also be separately compiled into other indices so could have a different answer | |
3a | Body or Appendix | Example string | Yes | E.g. fictional person name, IRI, EAI, domain name, etc. Currently there's no XML markup to denote example strings, so hard to distinguish from (3c) | |
3b | Body or Appendix | Code snippet | No? | “Code” does not mean examples here, but actual grammar like ABNF, C, etc. | |
3c | Body or Appendix | Literal protocol element | Yes? | Required transliteration should use U+xxxx syntax | |
3d | Body or Appendix | Document title of a cited document | Yes | Answer should match (4c) | |
3e | Body or Appendix | Prose | No | e.g. use of “naïve” in http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4690#section-1.5.5 | |
3f | Body or Appendix | Section title | No? | ||
4a | References | Author name | Yes | Answer should match (1a) | |
4b | References | Author affiliation | Yes | Answer should match (1b) | |
4c | References | Document title | Yes | Not necessarily an RFC that's being referenced | |
4d | References | Document IRI | No | ||
5a | Acknowledgements | Person name | Yes | ||
5b | Acknowledgements | Organization name | Yes | ||
6a | Authors Addresses | Author name | Yes | ||
6b | Authors Addresses | Author affiliation | Yes | ||
6c | Authors Addresses | Author email address (EAI) | No? | ||
6d | Authors Addresses | Author IRI | No | ||
6e | Authors Addresses | Author postal address | Yes | ||
7a | (page footer) | Author surname | Yes? | ||
7b | (page header) | Abbreviated document name | No? | ||
8a | (metadata) | Keywords | Yes | ||
Other open questions:
Strawman requirements (beyond those listed at https://www.rfc-editor.org/rse/wiki/doku.php?id=design:start):
Strawman principles (similar to RFC 6912 approach):