At 9:00 AM +0200 10/4/01, Dan Oscarsson wrote: >As all ACE-encoded names need to be decoded into native names when >entering a system, why not use UTF-8 over the wire to support simpler >handling of names?
For the same reasons people have been repeating on this list for the past year. UTF-8 is the "native" encoding for a very small number of people. Further, even for that very small number of people, UTF-8 is almost never the only encoding they have. Because of that, we need to assume that essentially all software that takes in or displays IDNs will have to do some conversion before putting the name parts on the wire. If we are going to require conversion, it is better to do that conversion to something that is already compatible with the current DNS protocol. Updating all of the DNS servers in the world is an option, but not one that makes much sense. --Paul Hoffman, Director --Internet Mail Consortium
