Sometimes following up on a bug takes you a lot further than you +expected. Debian bug #337041 +looked like it was going to be fairly straightforward once I upgraded +coreutils to figure out what the +new IUTF8 flag +actually did, since the SSH2 protocol already supports transferring termios +flags around.
+ +Unfortunately, since IUTF8 is relatively new, it doesn't have a number +assigned in the + +draft connection protocol. Moreover, that Internet-Draft is in the last +stages before becoming an RFC and can't be modified any more, and it doesn't +include any facility for private-use extensions. D'oh. To add further +complication, since IUTF8 is Linux-specific, it's not hard to imagine that +some other OS might introduce something with the same name but subtly +different semantics, and so the SSH protocols can't just defer to POSIX for +the definition but instead have to spell out exactly what they mean.
+ +As a result of all of this, it looks like the best way to make progress +might be for me to write an I-D myself that creates a channel extension to +set or clear IUTF8, and attempt to enlist support from some upstream +implementors. I didn't expect bug triage to lead me into the Internet +standardisation process quite so quickly!