I just wander, is idn-map proposal will be a good structure to accommodate ISO-8859 as a local standard? Since CJK servers are all have their own local standards and applicantions, which can obtain direct access to map-nameprep or idn-map on a local server without changing applicantions. idn-map proposal is described in draft-liana-idn-map-00.
Liana On Thu, 4 Oct 2001 09:00:37 +0200 (MEST) Dan Oscarsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > As the IDN list have been only focused on ACE and are now removing > the > proposals that support IDN nativly in the DNS protocol, I fear that > I will not be able to use non-ascii domain names for the next 10 > years. > > To understand why, you have to look at how domain names are used on > your > computer systems. > When I look at mine, I enter or handle domain/host names in many > places, > for example: host-files, logs, web pages, text documents and > databases. > In all these places the names are using my systems local native > character set. > All programs handle that. > To use non-ascii names, the only acceptable way to do it is to enter > them > natively in all places. Natively does not mean ACEencoded names, it > means > using the native character set. My web pages will never containg ACE > in > URLs, they will containg ISO 8859-1 characters just like the rest of > my web pages. My host files may not contain ACE, the must use ISO > 8859-1. > To use ACE-encoded host names can never be an application specific > modification. > The only viable way to do it is to convert all names when they leav > the > DNS protocol into local character set. Under Unix this could be done > in the resolver libraries so that applications never need to know > the > protocol used over DNS. > To allow mixed usage of ACE-encoded and native names will result in > a > terrible mess. The only usable way is for all names to be nativly > encoded > within a system. > > The current groups wanting ACE-encoded names do not take this into > consideration. At least I have seen no discussions about it. > > 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? > There are two places where ACE-encoded names are needed: > 1) When talking to ancient systems. > 2) When not being able to represent an UCS name using the local > native > character set. > But in all other cases UTF-8 will do and will result for systems > using UTF-8 natively that they can use dns names without any > convertion. This will never happen with ACE, no system will ever > use ACE-encoded text as native character set. > > So forget about quick use of non-ASCII names because of ACE. As long > as my > applications cannot accept a native name or an UTF-8 name, non-ASCII > names cannot be used. I am not going to expose my users to the > mess and confusion that ACE-encoded names will result in. > > When I can register a domain name using non-ASCII characters and can > query and get it returned in UTF-8 or ISO 8859-1, and my system stop > rejecting names because they conatin non-ASCII characters, then I > can > start using IDNs. > > Dan > >
