PMP Mail Archive: Re: PMP> ISSUE: OCTET STRING ...

Re: PMP> ISSUE: OCTET STRING ...

Ira Mcdonald x10962 (imcdonal@eso.mc.xerox.com)
Thu, 17 Jul 1997 20:41:35 PDT

Jay and others,

This is a last gasp, but...

NVT ASCII from IETF Telnet (the mandatory ONLY code set underlying
'DisplayString' with MANDATORY semantics for CR and LF - unlike
Dave Kellerman's inaccurate comment about LF as just a delimiter)

does NOT permit the use of EVEN UTF-7 (which uses the same code
points with a shift sequence to encode a DIFFERENT character
set, Unicode UCS-2 from ISO 10646)

If you folks leave 'prtChannelInformation' as 'DisplayString'
then Scott Isaacson may NOT put Unicode (no matter how it's
folded into UTF-7 or UTF-8) in for NetWare channel types -
Jay, Scott made clear on a telecon I attended months ago
that NetWare NDS uses Unicode and NOT ASCII names for
PServers and RPrinters - there's your example of 'someone
who uses another code set.

Conformance in SNMP MIBs means just that - literal, exact
conformance - not 'close enough' - NVT ASCII does NOT
permit the use of UTF-7 (same code points, but different
displayed graphical characters, per RFC 2130).

If none of you folks want to play in the international
marketplace or none of you care if you violate the conformance
rules stated in the Printer MIB, Xerox and Fuji Xerox and
Rank Xerox do care, very much.

Cheers,
- Ira McDonald (outside consultant at Xerox)
High North Inc
PO Box 221
Grand Marais, MI 49839
906-494-2434