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Network Working Group                                      H. AlvestrandRequest for Comments: 1502                                  SINTEF DELAB                                                             August 1993X.400 Use of Extended Character SetsStatus of this Memo   This RFC specifies an IAB standards track protocol for the Internet   community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.   Please refer to the current edition of the "IAB Official Protocol   Standards" for the standardization state and status of this protocol.   Distribution of this memo is unlimited.1.  Introduction   Since 1988, X.400 has had the capacity for carrying a large number of   different character sets in a message by using the body part   "GeneralText" defined by ISO/IEC 10021-7.   Since 1992, the Internet also has the means of passing around   messages containing multiple character sets, by using the mechanism   defined in RFC-MIME.   This RFC defines a suggested method of using "GeneralText" in order   to harmonize as much as possible the usage of this body part.2.  General principles2.1.  Goals   The target of this memo is to define a way of using existing   standards to achieve:    (1)  in the short term, a standard for sending E-mail in the         European languages (Latin letters with European accents,         Greek and Cyrillic)    (2)  in the medium term, extending this to cover the Hebrew and         Arabic character sets    (3)  in the long term, opening up true international E-mail by         allowing the full character set specified in ISO-10646 to be         used.Alvestrand                                                      [Page 1]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993   The author believes that this document gives a specification that can   easily accomodate the use of any character set in the ISO registry,   and, by giving guidance rules for choosing character sets, will help   interworking.2.2.  Families of character sets2.2.1.  ISO 6937/T.61   ISO 6937 is a code technique used and recommended in T.51 and T.101   (Teletex and Videotex service) and in X.500, providing a repertoire   of 333 characters from the Latin script by use of non- spacing   diacritical marks. It corresponds closely to CCITT recommendation   T.61.   The problem with that technique is that the character stream comes in   two modes, i.e., some characters are coded with one byte and some   with two (composite characters). This makes information processing   systems such as an E-mail UA or GW more complex.   It is also not extensible to other languages like Korean or Chinese,   or even Greek, without invoking the character set switching   techniques of ISO 2022.2.2.2.  ISO 8859   ISO 8859 defines a set of character sets, each suitable for use in   some group of languages. Each character in ISO 8859 is coded in a   single byte.   There are currently 11 parts of ISO 8859, plus a "supplementary" set,   registered as ISO IR 154. Most languages using single-byte characters   can be written in one or another of the ISO 8859 sets.  There are   sets covering Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, but there is still   controversy over the problem of the rendering direction for Hebrew   and Arabic.   All the ISO 8859 sets include US-ASCII as a subset. All use 8 bits.   ISO 8859 is regarded by many as a solution; for instance, the X   windows system now comes with ISO-8859-1 as the "standard" character   set, with the possibility of specifying others. But since the same   applications often do not support character set switching within   text, it is problematic to use these in a truly multilingual   environment.  (Also, most fonts claiming to be "ISO- 8859-1" in X11R5   are actually 7-bit fonts. The implied lie is very unfortunate.)Alvestrand                                                      [Page 2]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993   It turns out to work fine, however, if the second language is   English, since this can be written in all ISO 8859 sets.   The parts 3 and 4 have not seen wide acceptance, and it is expected   that they will be discarded. They should therefore not be used.   Note that an ISO 8859 set is actually 2 sets in the ISO sense: US-   ASCII in the G0 set and another character set in the G1 set.  The   overloading of the word "character set" is unfortunate, but   traditional.2.2.3.  ISO 10646   At the moment of writing, ISO 10646 has just been accepted as an   International Standard. It is basically a 32-bit character set, with   all of the currently used characters being numbered by the first 16   bits, leaving some room for expansion.   It is not possible to use ISO 10646 as a normal character set,   because it does not conform to the rules for usage of byte values set   down in ISO 2022 and other places; it uses the "control space" for   (parts of) graphic character codes.   There are a number of ways to encode ISO 10646 characters "on the   wire". There are methods within the ISO 2022 standard to switch to   these, either as "other coding system without return" or as "other   coding system with return" (that is, you can go back from it to the   one you came from using an ISO 2022 escape sequence).   The following registrations have been made:    ISO 10646 UCS-2 Level 1 has been registered with ESC 2/5 2/15 4/0,    ISO 10646 UCS-4 Level 1 has been registered with ESC 2/5 2/15 4/1,   The following are applied for:    Reg# Escape sequence  Standard/Sponsor   Description    174  ESC 2/5 2/15 F   ISO/IEC 10646      UCS-2, Level 2    175  ESC 2/5 2/15 F   ISO/IEC 10646      UCS-4, Level 2    176  ESC 2/5 2/15 F   ISO/IEC 10646      UCS-2, Level 3    177  ESC 2/5 2/15 F   ISO/IEC 10646      UCS-4, Level 3    178  ESC 2/5 F        ISO/IEC 10646      UTF-1    << NOTE: The registration numbers for UCS-2 level 1 and UCS-4    level 1 are not known. Neither are the assigned final characters    for the other sets. Information requested!>>Alvestrand                                                      [Page 3]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993   This character set will become very important in the future, but at   the moment, few systems are able to support this directly.   The GeneralText body part can be used for carrying any of these   character sets.2.3.  Body parts that can be used in X.400   At the moment, no established way of transferring a full set of   characters in X.400-based E-mail exists.  In the future, it is likely   that a new body part, based in ISO 10646, will be available, or   GeneralText may be able to use ISO 10646, but this matter has not yet   been clarified.   In the short term, the deployed and available body parts are:    (1)  IA5Text    (2)  For X.400/84: ISO6937Text and Teletex    (3)  For X.400/88: GeneralText   IA5Text is the method of choice for E-mail that contains only   characters from IA5 (equivalent to US-ASCII).   The ISO6937Text body part is defined in the ISO DIS documents   corresponding to X.400(84) [10]; these never became a standard, so   they are now quite difficult to find. It is in principle limited to   using text that can be presented in ISO 6937, but since ISO 6937   refers to the ISO 2022 method of changing character sets, it is   theoretically possible to use any ISO registered character set, but   there is no facility for announcing the character sets used. This   makes interworking with equipment that does not support the same   character sets complex.   It is still, however, the only body part suitable for carrying non-   paginated text in non-basic character sets in X.400(84).   Teletex, which is identical in all versions of the X.400 standard,   has the same problem of implicit ISO6937, but has the added problem   that it also specifies a page format, with, for instance, a left   margin of 5 character positions. This is often not desirable.   The details of Teletex are specified in recommendation T.51 and its   relatives.   GeneralText is defined in ISO 10021-8, the part of [9] that   corresponds to CCITT recommendation [11]. It is an Extended bodyAlvestrand                                                      [Page 4]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993   part, so no modification to CCITT implementations is needed to carry   it.   GeneralText is suitable for interchange, since it has got proper   announcement facilities. It can use any number of character sets, and   announces them both in the Encoded Information Types of the X.400   envelope and the parameters of the body part.   We recommend this body part for carrying unformatted text in   X.400/88.3.  GUIDELINES FOR THE GENERATION OF GENERALTEXT3.1.  Formal definition of GeneralText   A GeneralText message is a byte stream that contains characters and   character switching sequences according to [12].   The X.400 ASN.1 definition of the GeneralText body part is:    general-text-body-part EXTENDED-BODY-PART-TYPE        PARAMETERS GeneralTextParameters IDENTIFIED BY id-ep-general-text        DATA       GeneralTextData        ::= id-et-general-text    GeneralTextParameters ::= SET OF CharacterSetRegistration    CharacterSetRegistration ::= INTEGER (1..32767)    GeneralTextData ::= GeneralString   The definition is from ISO/IEC 10021-7 [9], Annex I, with   modifications made in the MHS Implementor' Guide, version 8, chapter   3.6.3, bullet F130. It does not appear in the CCITT version of the   standards.3.2.  Brief description of ISO 2022 character set switching   There are 4 graphic character sets active at any time in a   GeneralText message, called G0, G1, G2 and G3. In addition, there are   2 control character sets, called C0 and C1.   At any moment, one of the sets G0-G3 is active in code positions 2/1   to 7/14, and another is active in code positions 10/0 to 15/15. The   setting is achieved by so-called "locking shift" sequences.   (Formally, code positions 2/0 and 7/15 are reserved for "space" and   "DEL" respectively, and only 94-character character sets can be usedAlvestrand                                                      [Page 5]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993   in G0. In practice, this restriction is sometimes ignored)   Single characters from the non-active sets may be invoked by the use   of "single shift" sequences.   The control character sets always occupy the code positions 0/0 to   1/15 (C0) and 8/0 to 9/15 (C1).   The character sets currently active as G0-G3 and C0-C1 may be changed   using "character set designating sequences".   At the beginning of a GeneralText message, one must always assume   that set 2 (IA5) is active as G0, shifted into the lower half, that   set 1 (standard) is active as C0, and that no G1-G3 or C1 set is   invoked. This is specified in the definition of "GeneralString" in   [5], the definition of ASN.1 encoding (section 23.5.2).   If this is not a suitable initial state, a message must always start   with the necessary announcers and escape sequences to designate and   invoke the character sets that are actually used.  The character sets   in use may be changed later in the message by use of escape   sequences.   The parameters of a GeneralText message always list all the character   sets used, by quoting their ISO reference numbers.   It is impossible to use a character set not registered with ISO in a   GeneralText message.   It is also impossible to decide on the true meaning of a byte in a   GeneralText message without scanning the whole message for shift and   escape sequences.3.3.  How to use the character sets   RECOMMENDATION:   When the text to be rendered is representable in one of the character   sets of ISO-8859, the G0 set should be set to ISO 646 International   Reference Version (1991), also called US-ASCII, ISO-IR-6.   The older character set ISO-IR-2, ISO 646 IRV(1983), should NOT be   used.  This means that the escape sequence ESC 2/8 4/2 (designating   US-ASCII as G0) should always occur at the beginning of the message.   The G1 set should be set to the character set identified by the   relevant ISO-8859 part. G2 and G3 are not used.Alvestrand                                                      [Page 6]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993   This corresponds to the first level of ISO 4873 usage.   For the currently defined parts of ISO 8859, the character set   designations for the G1 set are (relative to ISO 8859:1987):    Part    ISO IR name             Escape sequence Remarks                                    for G1 use    1       ISO-IR-100              Esc 2D 41    West Europe (Latin-1)    2       ISO-IR-101              Esc 2D 42    East European (Latin-2)    3       ISO-IR-109              Esc 2D 43    (Latin-3)    4       ISO-IR-110              Esc 2D 44    (Latin-4)    5       ISO-IR-144              Esc 2D 4C    Cyrillic    6       ISO-IR-127              Esc 2D 47    Arabic    7       ISO-IR-126              Esc 2D 46    Greek    8       ISO-IR-138              Esc 2D 48    Hebrew    9       ISO-IR-148              Esc 2D 4D    Turkish (Latin-5)    10      ISO-IR-157              Not listed   Sami (Latin-6)   The escape sequence for 8859-10 (Latin-6) is not listed inRFC 1345.   NOTE: The use of ISO 8859-3 and ISO 8859-4 is NOT recommended if   other possibilities exist.   NOTE: There is a debate about the Arabic and Hebrew character sets.   These languages are normally read right to left, but encodings have   been done in both "visual" (left to right) and "phonetic" (right to   left) ordering, there is significant disagreement about what the   "right" way to do it is, and the character sets mentioned do not   specify it. So, one should be careful not to use these character sets   until a standard is agreed upon, or the result will probably be   unreadable (siht ekil).   (Note that there is some confusion as to what parts are actually   standardized; the Norwegian standards institute reports that only   part 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8 are currently standards. Other reports   claim that both 8859-10 and 8859-11 are standards, and I definitely   think that 8859-9 is.)   NOTE: ISO has not ruled out the possibility of changing the ISO 8859   standard. This would involve changing the registry information in   this table, so this should be assumed valid for ISO 8859 versions   that are current in 1993.   The G1 set should be permanently shifted into the upper half of the   code page.Alvestrand                                                      [Page 7]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993   When the text is not representable in one of the ISO-8859 character   sets, the following rules may be applied:    (1)  If any Latin characters are used, keep IA5 as the G0 set.    (2)  If a mainstream character set is used (Greek, Cyrillic,         Hebrew, Arabic), designate this as the G1 character set,         and permanently shift this into the upper half of the code         page (LS1R).         EXCEPTION: The Japanese community has a long tradition of         switching between the Japanese 16-bit character set         ISO-IR-87 and US-ASCII as the G0 set. See [7]         for details. If ISO-IR-87 is used, that technique should be         used instead of the one recommended here.    (3)  If occasional extensions to a character set that is         basically Latin occur (like accents, national variants         and so on), and these are available in a single character         set, designate the relevant set as G2 and use single         shift (SS2) to invoke characters from this character set.         The ISO 8859 supplementary set, ISO-IR-154, is recommended         for this purpose.         This corresponds to the ISO 4873 "second level" application.    (4)  If two non-Latin character sets are used, the second should         be designated as G3, and shifted into the upper half of the         code page by the use of Locking Shift 3 Right (LS3R).         This corresponds to the ISO 4873 "third level" application.    (5)  If avoidable, use of character sets with floating accents,         like ISO 6937, should be avoided.    (6)  The shifts changing the lower half of the code table (SI/SO,         LS2 and LS3) should NOT be used.   RATIONALE: Keeping the G0 set reserved for US-ASCII will ensure that   text in US-ASCII has the same bit representation always.   The use of the upper code page for other scripts ensures that both   text in these languages and text of this type mixed with English can   be represented without the use of shift sequences.   If the language and/or content of a text is completely unknown,   chapter 5 gives an algorithm that may be used to decide upon the   character sets. This might, for instance, be suitable for use atAlvestrand                                                      [Page 8]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993   automatic mail gateways.   NOTE: At the time of this writing, few applications that use ISO 4873   level 2 and level 3 encoding exist. It has been estimated that   implementing them in an application that already uses a rich   repertoire of characters is a matter of programmer-days, not   programmer-months, but this has not been proven.4.  GUIDELINES FOR THE RENDERING OF GENERALTEXT   As a basic rule, one should NOT assume that any of the rules above   are followed.   An user agent capable of rendering GeneralText should:    (1)  ALWAYS be able to identify and render characters in IA5, no         matter how they are designated and invoked.    (2)  ALWAYS be able to identify and render characters in the         "native" character sets, no matter how they are designated         and invoked.    (3)  ALWAYS indicate the presence of characters that cannot be         adequately represented on the current output device.    (4)  NEVER render a character in an unknown or unrepresentable         character set by displaying the character in the same bit         position in the native character set.    (5)  PREFERABLY be able to identify and render characters that are         the same as characters in the "native" character sets, even         though they are designated and invoked as part of other         character sets.  This applies in particular to the         "invariant" part of ISO 8859, parts 1 through 6.    (6)  PREFERABLY be able to combine the floating accents of ISO         6937 with their base characters for suitable rendering using         the capabilities of the current output device.    (7)  PREFERABLY be able to display text both in a mode using         fallbacks for nonrenderable characters and in a mode         designating nonrenderable characters as such.    (8)  PREFERABLY be able to save the content of a GeneralText         message to a file or other suitable media, saving all         character set information, for later processing by other         means.  It is not illegal to render the character set         information into a different format; however, it should beAlvestrand                                                      [Page 9]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993         noted that it is easy to lose vital information if the format         chosen for representing character sets does not offer the         possibility of referencing all character sets in the ISO         registry of character sets.   These requirements also apply to gateways that transform the message   into some other format, for example a gateway that transforms a   message into MIME using [7] for the purpose.5.  RECOMMENDATION FOR SELECTION OF CHARACTER SETS5.1.  Algorithm for selection of character sets   When one has text in which characters from several character sets   occurs, and wants to process this into a GeneralText document, it is   often hard to guess right at the character sets to select.   The following paragraphs give an algorithm that can be started at the   beginning of a message, and at the end of it, return a set of   character sets that can be used as G0..G3 character sets, OR an   indication that the task is impossible.    VARIABLES:    UsedSets         The set of character sets that MUST be used for this message    UsableSets         The set of character sets that MAY be used for this message.         Each set also contains a counter for each character position.    PossibleSets         The set of all the character sets known to be usable in the         destination format.         ALGORITHM:    1)   Add IA5 (ISO-IR-6) to the UsedSets (as G0).    2)   Get the next character of the text.  If the text is         completely analyzed, go to FINISHED    3)   If it is in the UsedSets, go to 2).    4)   Find the set of character sets from PossibleSets in which the         character occurs. If it does not occur in any, report         failure.Alvestrand                                                     [Page 10]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993    5)   If it is in a single character set in PossibleSets only, add         this set to UsedSets, and go to 2).    6)   If it is in more than one character set, add these to         PossibleSets (if not already present), and increment the         counter for that character in all the sets. Go to 2).    FINISHED)    1)   (FINAL SELECTION) Remove any character set in UsedSets from         PossibleSets.         Zero the counters for any character in PossibleSets that also         occurs in UsedSets.         WHILE (more characters left)           Select one character set and move it from PossibleSets to           UsedSqets.           Zero the counters for all characters in this set in the other           PossibleSets.         END WHILE         This step can be "tuned" any way you want, for instance by         choosing the character sets most likely to be understood at         the destination first, choosing the character sets covering         the most characters first, avoiding multi-byte character sets         as long as possible, or any other scheme suitable for the         application.5.2.  WHAT TO DO ON FAILURE   Failure will occur in this schema if a character is found that is not   in the PossibleSets. It may then be handled in one of the following   ways:    (1)  Replace the character with the SUB control character    (2)  Replace the character with Keld Simonsen Mnemonics [8].         This is a reversible transformation as long as the         recipient is aware that it has been used, but requires         passing out-of-band information to indicate this.    (3)  Replace the lost characters with any suitable fallback or         mnemonic scheme intended for human understanding    (4)  Bounce the message/refuse the conversion/give up.   The action to be taken may be different based on the percentage of   "lost" characters.Alvestrand                                                     [Page 11]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 1993   If the message has "controls" like "conversion with loss prohibited",   only the last possibility may be used.5.3.  RECOMMENDED CHARACTER SETS   There are 2 steps in the algorithm above that are left for local   judgement:    (1)  Selection of the sets to appear in PossibleSets.    (2)  The algorithm for deciding which character set to select in         step 9.   In the context of generating X.400 GeneralText messages, the   following is recommended:    Sets in PossibleSets:    ISO-IR-6        Esc 28 42 (G0)  US-ASCII, IA5, ISO646    ISO-IR-100      Esc 2D 41 (G1)  ISO-8859-1   West Europe    ISO-IR-101      Esc 2D 42 (G1)  ISO-8859-2   Central/Eastern Europe    ISO-IR-144      Esc 2D 4C (G1)  ISO-8859-5   Cyrillic    ISO-IR-127      Esc 2D 47 (G1)  ISO-8859-6   Arabic    ISO-IR-126      Esc 2D 46 (G1)  ISO-8859-7   Greek    ISO-IR-138      Esc 2D 48 (G1)  ISO-8859-8   Hebrew    ISO-IR-148      Esc 2D 4D (G1)  ISO-8859-9   Turkish   The following multi-byte character sets are recommended:    ISO-IR-87 (Japanese JIS C6226-1983)     Esc 24 29 42 (G1)    ISO-IR-149 (Korean KS C 5601-1989)      Esc 24 29 43 (G1)    ISO-IR-58 (Chinese GB 2312-80)          Esc 24 29 41 (G1)   It is a STRONG recommendation that character sets not listed above,   which do not add any new characters to the total set of characters   given by the character sets above, should NOT be used in X.400   interchange.   ISO-IR-87 is the Japanese character set that is allowed in a Teletex   string, such as the subject field.   NOTE: ISO-IR-87 has been "superseded" by ISO-IR-168, which allows two   extra Kanji characters. Any application that handles ISO-IR-87 should   also be able to handle ISO-IR-168.   Algorithm for selecting character sets:   Start at the top of the list above, and add each set only if it is   needed.Alvestrand                                                     [Page 12]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 19936.  REFERENCES   [1]  Information technology - ISO 8-bit code for information        interchange - Structure and rules for implementation, Third        edition, 1991-12-15.   [2]  Information technology - 8-bit single-byte coded graphic        character sets (parts 1-11; the parts have different dates, the        ones referenced here are fromRFC 1345).   [3]  Information technology - Coded graphic character set for text        communication (parts 1 and 2; part 2 dated 1983-12-15).   [4]  Code for the representation of names of languages. 1988 version.   [5]  CCITT Recommendation X.209(1988): Specification of Basic        Encoding Rules for Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1).        Technically aligned with ISO 8825 and ISO 8825/AD 1.   [6]  Information Technology - Universal Multiple-Octet Coded        Character Set (UCS) - ISO 10646.   [7]  Murai, J., Crispin M., and E. van der Poel, "Japanese Character        Encoding for Internet Message Bodies",RFC 1468, Keio        University, Panda Programming, June 1993.   [8]  Simonsen, K., "Character Mnemonics & Character Sets",RFC 1345,        Rationel Almen Planlaegning, June 1992.   [9]  Information Technology - Text communication - Message- Oriented        Text Interchange Systems (MOTIS) - ISO 10021  - October 1988.   [10] ISO DIS documents describing X.400/84 with slight extensions.        Now very hard to get copies of, since they failed to become        ISes.   [11] CCITT Recommendation X.420 (1988), Interpersonal Messaging        System.   [12] International Standard--Information Processing-- ISO 7-bit and        8-bit coded character sets--Code extension techniques, ISO        2022:1986.7.  Security Considerations   Security issues are not discussed in this memo.Alvestrand                                                     [Page 13]

RFC 1502          X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets       August 19938.  Author's Address   Harald Tveit Alvestrand   SINTEF DELAB   N-7034 Trondheim   NORWAY   EMail: Harald.Alvestrand@delab.sintef.noAlvestrand                                                     [Page 14]