Re: An argument against multiple character sets

[Paul Hoffman / IMC <phoffman@imc.org>]

At 04:44 PM 1/23/00 -0500, J. William Semich wrote:
>I'm assuming you are using "character set" interchangeably with "encoding"
>below...

Correct.

>How to best modify BIND in order for it to be able to deal with all this is
>probably much more important to this discussion than deciding which
>encoding should be set as the standard, IMO. UTF-8 looks pretty "standard"
>already, from the client/user point of view, at least.

Um, I think you're jumping the gun here. UTF-8 may be the quasi-standard 
for future Web browsers, but we don't want to break things for 
currently-deployed Web browsers, much less email clents and servers, or any 
other user of domain names. Also, relying on Microsoft to do something 
consistent in the future has not proven to be a reliable strategy in all cases.

>I'm not saying I think this "unofficial" working group should just bless
>UTF-8. I'm saying the more important work is in developing standards for
>upgrading BIND.

Before we've even finished the requirements, much less the protocol? Gosh, 
I can imagine some other things I'd like to see the BIND folks working on 
before then. :-)

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium