Subject: [Syslog-sec] Syslog protocol - UTF-8 encoding

From: "Alexander Clemm (alex)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 17:56:14 -0700

Hi,

2 questions/ suggestions concerning the UTF-8 encoding in the syslog
protocol:

1) Is the " " (white space) after the header to be encoded in ASCII or
UTF-8?  The spec seems currently open to that respect (although it would
seem logical for it to be still in ASCII); should be clarified.  

2)   Concerning the UTF-8 encoding, depending on where you send syslog
messages there are many scenarios in which it would be beneficial to
have an option in which NOT to use UTF-8 encoding but to also allow for
other encodings, in particular plain ASCII.  Such an option would also
allow for quicker adaptation of this specification, as it is eases the
migration.  To provide for that, it seems it would make sense to allow
for a flag in the header part of the message - at the tail end (that is
known to be still ASCII encoded), right before the structured data, that
indicates which encoding is used - that is, whether UTF-8 is in effect,
or if another encoding is used - ex. ASCII, or even proprietary.   

(Apologies in case this aspect was discussed in the past and I am
beating on a dead horse; but this appears important enough to bring up.)

--- Alex
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From: "David B Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 22:57:55 -0400

Hi,

According to STD63, UTF-8 has the characteristic of preserving the
full US-ASCII range.

David Harrington
[email-masked]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of 
> Alexander Clemm (alex)
> Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 8:56 PM
> To: Rainer Gerhards
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: [Syslog-sec] Syslog protocol - UTF-8 encoding
> 
>  
> Hi,
>

---

From: "David B Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 23:10:25 -0400

Hi,

In reading my response, it seeems a bit too succinct. 

The relevant text from STD63 is:
"UTF-8, the object of this memo, has a one-octet encoding unit.  It
   uses all bits of an octet, but has the quality of preserving the
full
   US-ASCII [US-ASCII] range: US-ASCII characters are encoded in one
   octet having the normal US-ASCII value, and any octet with such a
   value can only stand for a US-ASCII character, and nothing else."

Hope this allays your concerns. 

David Harrington
[email-masked]

> David B Harrington
> Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 10:58 PM
> To: 'Alexander Clemm (alex)'; 'Rainer Gerhards'
> Subject: RE: [Syslog-sec] Syslog protocol - UTF-8 encoding
> 
> Hi,
> 
> > 1) Is the " " (white space) after the header to be encoded in
ASCII
> or

---

From: "Andrew Ross" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 14:03:20 +1200

Hi Alex,

The way I understand it, ASCII is a subset of UTF-8 (i.e. The first 127 chrs
of UTF-8 are the same as ASCII chrs). My vote is to standardize on UTF-8 as
the encoding system. If you wanted to send ASCII (7 bit), then you are
actually sending the exact same bytes on the wire as you would for UTF-8. 

With regard to the space chr. As far as I know, there is only one way to
encode this. ASCII 32 (&h20) = UTF-8 32 (&20) = space. 

Since UTF-8 can handle all of the Unicode characters and matches ASCII for
the first 127 chrs, I believe we should stick to that encoding system. It
also avoids having to add a header to define the character set. 

Apart from ASCII encoding, could you see a requirement for any other
encoding system?

Cheers

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked]
[mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Alexander Clemm
(alex)
Sent: Thursday, 26 May 2005 12:56 p.m.
To: Rainer Gerhards
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: [Syslog-sec] Syslog protocol - UTF-8 encoding

Hi,

--- Alex