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RED CIENTIFICA PERUANA                 ISO PARA CARACTERES EN ESPANHOL
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Nearly-now:  There is a new proposed standard called MIME (look up in
the index of your local RFC depository) which is oriented toward
handling multiple character sets as well as various multimedia bits.  It
is getting implemented very quickly in many places.  It provides a
fairly general way to deal with the "international character set"
issues.
    Now: There are "national variant ISO 646" character sets in which
national characters are substituted for the "national character
positions" in ASCII or ISO646.  Use of these things in RFC822-based
email is not strictly valid, and there is no clearly-agreed mechanism
for designating the char sets.  In other words, this is "between
consenting adults" stuff, with the expectation that posting national
character variations on a general mailing list will cause confusion or
flaming.
     Sometimes, but nearly never:  The SMTP protocol specifies ASCII
and, more specifically, 7bit character sets.  The national 646
variations work because they are still 7bit char sets.  Some vendors
carry 8bit characters over SMTP on the theory that the worst thing that
can happen is that those characters get trashed (by bit-smashing or
otherwise).  Also a "better consenting adults" options, but a fairly
clear protocol violation.
    --john   klensin@infoods.unu.edu


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