I have removed [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], and [EMAIL PROTECTED] from the Cc: list. I assume that if they want to hear from me, they'll contact me.
"D. J. Bernstein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I recently asked a simple question about how IDNA is supposed to work, > from a programmer's perspective: under UNIX, if LANG is en_US.UTF-8, > should the MH/NMH ``show'' mail-displaying program convert names from > the IDNA character set to UTF-8? Costello...ignored the question. I ignored it because you had already asked the exact same question using "dig" instead of "show" and I'd already answered that question. It's easy to see that no matter what we do, things will break: For a long time, domain names have in practice contained only ASCII characters. There is bound to be software that breaks when fed non-ASCII domain names. If a program outputs non-ASCII domain names that are fed to unprepared software, things will break. If a program encodes non-ASCII domain names using ASCII characters, and those encoded names are seen by humans, that is another form of breakage. Programs can often guess which form of output is preferrable, but as you correctly point out, they cannot always know for sure. Therefore, there is no way to completely prevent breakage, except to stick with ASCII-only domain names. If this were considered a show-stopper, the working group could have conceded defeat and disbanded long ago. Instead, it chose to push ahead and attempt to minimize (not eliminate) breakage and maximize interoperability and incremental deployability. I probably shouldn't have bothered to write this. It's not really constructive, and we've been over all this before. Don't count on me to return your next volley. AMC
