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-------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: Balazs Scheidler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Rainer Gerhards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: RE: [Syslog] #5 - character encoding (was: Consensus?)
> Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 10:55:42 +0100
> 
> On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 09:01 +0100, Rainer Gerhards wrote:
> > Sheran, 
> > 
> > > Also want to clarify that you suggest that if the message is in ASCII,
> > > it will not required SD-ID, but for all other encodings, SD-ID will be
> > > required.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, we can not do this. If we would know the encoding, we
> > could translate it to UTF-8, as so far is required by syslog-protocol.
> > However, we often do not know which encoding it is. The reason is that
> > the POSIX syslog API does not tell us. So if we want to support POSIX
> > (which I think we must), we must allow a syslog sender to send messages
> > without telling the encoding - simply because it has no way to obtain
> > that knowledge.
> > 
> > A syslog sender embedded e.g. in a device does probably not have this
> > restriction. So it SHOULD encode in UTF-8. That will ensure the receiver
> > can understand it. If the sender has absolutely no idea of how to do
> > that, but knows the encoding, then (and only then) it SHOULD specify the
> > encoding.
> 
> Just a small note, there is a way in the syslog() libc function to
> recover current encoding information based on the contents of the
> LC_CTYPE (or LANG) environment variable. So although the API does not
> explicitly contain parameters to specify encoding, the program
> environment contains this information. You are right that the standard
> POSIX API without any changes will send unfiltered/unconverted strings
> to syslog without any encoding information, but it is not impossible to
> create a replacement for syslog(3) that actually delivers this
> information while staying compatible with the POSIX API.
> 
> The way I see it:
> - have the SD-ID to specify encoding and use that if available
> - if there is no SD-ID (legacy applications) then assume US-ASCII and
> let the administrator override this on a per-source basis (using a
> SHOULD clause)
> - implementation SHOULD validate (and possibly convert) incoming
> messages and SHOULD allow the administrator to choose what to do with
> non-conforming characters (drop, substitute, leave it as is)
> 
> 
-- 
Bazsi


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