Re: base32 alphabet rant - rhaaaaa rfc3548

[Roy Arends <roy@dnss.ec>]

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005, Simon Josefsson wrote:

> Roy Arends <roy@dnss.ec> writes:
>
> > There exist multiple base32 alphabets. The two mostly used are
> > "A-Z2-7" (examples in rfc3548) and "0-9A-V" (examples in rfc2938).
>
> We could update RFC 3548 to add an alternative base32 alphabet, to
> handle this problem.  I have some other pending nits to that document,
> available from <http://josefsson.org/base-encoding/>.

That would be a good thing.

> > Note that rfc3548 is informational, and that it refers to the origin of
> > this base32 alphabet on a work in progress. However, this work in progress
> > does not mention any base32 encoding.
>
> Look at the 00..02 versions of that draft; it was agreed by the SASL
> WG to split out the part that uses base32 into a separate document,
> but that document hasn't materialized itself yet.  I may convince them
> to use the 0-9A-V alphabet instead.

That would be a good thing too.

> > I'll prolly add a section on this base "0-9A-V" alphabet. Something I
> > hoped wasn't necessary, but since the sort order is screwed, I have to.

Is the pending-nits combined with a second alphabet for base32 
substantional enough to justify 3548-bis ? Would be nice since a normative 
reference is more handsome than adding yet another appendix explaining 
base32.

Thanks,

Roy

--
to unsubscribe send a message to namedroppers-request@ops.ietf.org with
the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body.
archive: <http://ops.ietf.org/lists/namedroppers/>