> Keith Moore writes:
> > You posted an example where you claimed that your software would have
> > trouble,
>
> False.
The fact that the bugs are detected elsewhere is hardly a justification
for poor design choices in your software, especially when those choices
exceed the design limitations that are documented in the mail protocol
specifications.
> > the presumption is that ACE IDNs will cause less trouble than UTF-8
> > IDNs.
>
> Actually, people have been claiming that ACE IDNs will cause no trouble
> at all, and suggesting this as a litmus test for IDN solutions.
Such claims are obviously exaggerated. Any IDN scheme will
cause some degree of disruption, the question is how much.
> As for the frequency and severity of failures: What matters is the
> software involved in deliveries _where IDNs appear_. People likely to
> use IDNs are also people likely to have already moved to 8-bit-clean
> software---because 8-bit data shows up all the time in Subject lines,
8-bit data does show up all the time in Subject lines, and in other
fields. It is also quite often mangled beyond recognition, due to
a combination of software that is unable to cope with 8 bit text,
software that attempts to convert 8-bit text to RFC 2047 form, and
software that tries to perform character set conversions on such
text without knowing the original character set.
> > But (assuming careful choice of the ACE) few ACE IDNs are likely to be
> > significantly longer than UTF-8 IDNs,
>
> That simply isn't true. A 10-byte limit causes much more trouble for the
> ACE proposals than for UTF-8. Try some examples!
A 10-byte limit causes trouble for lots of ordinary domain names, so
I fail to see how this is terribly significant.
Keith
