Re: [idn] An experiment with UTF-8 domain names

[D. J. Bernstein c/o James Seng]

paf writes:
> They have to be changed because of the nameprep stage,

Ah, yes, the stage where af.mi1 is converted to af.mil.

I know this will come as a shock to you, but I've never implemented that
stage. The registries don't accept af.mi1 as an alias for af.mil;
neither do I.

Users who see af.mil on a business card have to type af.mil, not af.mi1,
into the computer. If they don't know how to do that, too bad.

I'm going to continue allowing DNS administrators to set up ``lDNs''
even though I know that some users will have trouble typing them.

Keith Moore writes:
> you're testing the wrong things.

Setting up domain names in DNS, arranging for them to receive mail,
sending mail to them, and reading the mail, are the ``wrong things''?
Do you also think that putting up web pages and reading them are the
``wrong things''?

> we also know that the vast majority of applications cannot properly
> input or display UTF-8 strings, and that some applications will either
> break or improperly handle UTF-8 strings when they appear in domain names.

Several of us keep asking for details of what exactly will break. The
anti-UTF-8 people keep refusing to provide those details. Why? Could it
be because the failures aren't as widespread as they claim?

Yes, sendmail corrupts UTF-8 IDNs. Perhaps other programs have trouble
too. How difficult will it be to fix them? Why should we believe that
painful MIME-style IDNs will be less expensive?

All I'm asking for is an accurate evaluation of the costs and benefits
of each IDN proposal.

> most UNIX users today are not using UTF-8 as a local charset.

XFree86 4.0 uses the UTF-8 version of xterm. It's easy to configure
Emacs and vim and less to treat text as UTF-8. This is going to replace
8859-1 as the default; UNIX users are tired of dealing with deficient
character sets.

Is this upgrade free? No. People will be stuck with 8859-1 text files
for years, and will have to go through extra effort to view them until
they're converted to UTF-8 on disk. But choosing another IDN proposal
isn't going to reduce this cost.

> illegal message header

Irrelevant. The format was extended. Calling a successful experiment
unsuccessful because it wasn't IETF-sanctioned is silly.

---Dan