RE: [idn] IURL vs URL, IDNS name vs DNS name

[Jonathan Rosenne <rosenne@qsm.co.il>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-idn@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-idn@ops.ietf.org]On
> Behalf Of John C Klensin
> Sent: Friday, February 11, 2000 9:04 AM
> To: Larry Masinter
> Cc: idn@ops.ietf.org
> Subject: Re: [idn] IURL vs URL, IDNS name vs DNS name
>
>
> --On Thursday, 10 February, 2000 14:36 -0800 Larry Masinter
> <LM@att.com> wrote:
>
> (2) But that model isn't very different from a directory overlay
> on the DNS, where the directory is entirely internationalized
> and the contents of the DNS itself are eventually viewed as just
> a collection of octets in particular ranges (that happen to
> correspond to ASCII A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and "-"), i.e., as protocol
> elements not names that are expected to have any human
> significance.  Use of a directory overlay for this purpose would
> have some advantages over using the DNS, e.g., one could do
> smarter lookups if one assumed one was dealing with names in a
> known natural language than is sensible for the labels of the
> current DNS and, should the character set wars break out again,
> one might use different systems in different environments.  The
> reverse mapping problems wouldn't be easy, but might not be
> significanty more difficult than would exist if the new names
> were embedded in the DNS on a "no flag day and you can't wreck
> old servers, resolvers, or applications" basis.
>
>      john
>
>

The UCS could be encoded using A-Z 0-9. On average each non-ASCII character
would require 3 to 4 characters. All we need to change is to allow longer
names in DNS and to provide a viewer which decodes these creatures back to
UCS or the local code page.

Jony