On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Csongor Fagyal wrote: > I agree - partially. I would say we needed a FINAL definition of IDNs, > their encoding, nameserver setup and so on. Once these are ready, I am > sure that all open source guys around will insert IDNs into their > software - say, Mozilla, BIND, sendmail,postfix, and so on and so on... > That would solve most of the problems, but it will not happen until the > specs are final. > However, one cannot expect IDNs to work on all browsers and e-mail > agents: IDNs are not backward compatible, so to say. I would be happy > with a simple "it is settled, green light to IDNs" from ICANN (or > Verisign or whoever).
i stand to be corrected here - my understanding of events in the idn world is fuzzy. a standard already exist which is supported by a number of software developers including IE. thats utf-8 - those interested should find the rfc at the ietf archives. but verisign for some odd reason went with their own standard which required plug in support. now i remember reading a notice from verisign on nanog which detailed some weird proxy majik with the dns and port 80. all queries to the tld servers carrying their idn's will be answered by a proxy server which will then look up the respective domain name and proxy the session. i always say if it looks like a duck and quacks like one - then we most likely have a duck and the egg laying is next. this whole proxy service to make idn work without a plug in defeats the general purposes of the dns. and introduces another point of failure - i.e. the verisign proxy. so i assume there's some hope. i wonder if anyone has tried to register a utf-8 name in the dns maybe a cctld to test and see if it would work with a browser without any plug in. would be fun to know the results. cheers joe baptista yes .gods on our side www.dot-god.com
