Subject: Re: finger
To: Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino <itojun@iijlab.net>
From: Johan Danielsson <joda@pdc.kth.se>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 09/10/2002 02:17:28
Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino <itojun@iijlab.net> writes:

> so kimmo should go ahead and propose it to IETF.

Feel free to do that. But I don't think you really can extend that
protocol, as all inputs seem to be covered.

Actually I think that 1288 explicitly sanctions using LC_CTYPE to get
non-ascii data printed on the terminal. That they confuse ascii with
some generic eight bit character set can probably be ignored, it's a
common mistake and it's quite obvious what they meant.

2.2.  Data format

   Any data transferred MUST be in ASCII format, with no parity, and
   with lines ending in CRLF (ASCII 13 followed by ASCII 10).  This
   excludes other character formats such as EBCDIC, etc.  This also
   means that any characters between ASCII 128 and ASCII 255 should
   truly be international data, not 7-bit ASCII with the parity bit set.


3.3.  Client security

   It is expected that there will normally be some client program that
   the user runs to query the initial RUIP.  By default, this program
   SHOULD filter any unprintable data, leaving only printable 7-bit
   characters (ASCII 32 through ASCII 126), tabs (ASCII 9), and CRLFs.

   This is to protect against people playing with terminal escape codes,
   changing other peoples' X window names, or committing other dastardly
   or confusing deeds.  Two separate user options SHOULD be considered
   to modify this behavior, so that users may choose to view
   international or control characters:

      -    one to allow all characters less than ASCII 32

      -    another to allow all characters greater than ASCII 126

   For environments that live and breathe international data, the system
   administrator SHOULD be given a mechanism to enable the latter option
   by default for all users on a particular system.  This can be done
   via a global environment variable or similar mechanism.


/Johan