Re: [idn] Domain names and ASCII compatibility

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

>A domain name can be used for many things, two you often have met
>is host name and e-mail address. Examples are:
>   Host name: orion.world.net
>   E-mail:    kent\.xson.mail.net (same as kent.xson@mail.net).
>Note that the e-mail address can contain a dot (.).

Sorry, but the email part of this is incorrect. RFC 1034 uses this as a 
hack to fit email addresses into zone files, where "@" is a special 
character, at least in BIND. You can see from RFC 821 that 
"kent\.xson.mail.net" will not work either as a source address or as a 
delivery address.

>We are defining internationalisation of domain names, not just
>host names. So it should be possible to have names like:
>    Host name: www.gås.net
>    E-mail:    kåre.åkesson@gås.net

Again, the email part of this is also incorrect. RFC 822 very clearly 
states that the addresses cannot have characters outside 0-127 (with some 
restrictions in this range).

We should all be more careful not to misstate the current capabilities of 
IETF protocols.

Please also note that this thread tends to indicate that that email is the 
only protocol which cannot use UTF-8. That's far from true. The limitations 
of PKIX and SNMP have also been discussed on this mailing list. Saying 
"we'll do whatever we want and all the existing protocols that our choice 
breaks will just have to fix themselves and then get the fixes deployed" 
doesn't really acknowledge that mail, security, and network management are 
considered as much a part of the foundation of the Internet as DNS is.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium