> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Hoffman / IMC [mailto:phoffman@imc.org]
...
> <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-hoffman-idn-cidnuc-00.txt>.
|...
|2.5 Base32
|
|In order to encode non-ASCII characters in DNS-compatible domain parts,
|they must be converted into legal characters. This is done with Base32
|encoding, described here.
|
|Table 3 shows the mapping between input bits and output characters in
|Base32. Design note: the digits used in Base32 are "2" through "8" ("8"
|...
Oh, no! Not Q-P/BASE64/UTF-7 all over again. Fortunately UTF-7 never
became popular, but Q-P still haunts us after a decade. For my part,
I will not support any new/special/extra encoding for IDN.
Can we please learn from past mistakes and NOT do a "Q-P" blunder again.
UTF-8 as-is is backwards compatible with ASCII. Is there any specific
reason to beleive that any DNS equipment (software) that is not ONLY
collecting dust would misbehave badly because of UTF-8 (beyond "not found",
which may be tolarable for a while)?
Kind regards
/kent k