Re: [idn] Domain names and ASCII compatibility

["David R. Conrad" <David.Conrad@nominum.com>]

Bill,

> It is
> fundamentally impossible to move to a fully-functional idn and *not* have
> some (already broken) applications disfunction on the Internet. 

I suspect this largely depends on the definition of "fully-functional",
however I do not disagree with your sentiment that the existing requirements
draft, as written, cannot be met using a UTF-8 solution.

> this
> language is unfairly biased toward supporting non-standard or broken
> implementations currently in place, and not towards supporting "current
> protocols," which is more appropriate.

One might note, however, that "non-standard or broken" implementations were
(most likely) conformant at one time and that breaking those implementations
to support a fairly fundamental shift in the underlying technology would be,
at the very least, rude.

Rightly or wrongly, I am doubtful that the IETF will buy into a solution that
does not take into consideration backwards compatibility.  As such, I suspect
it would be important to ammend the WG's "deliverables" to include some sort
of analysis of what might break should a non-backwards compatable solution be
chosen.

Rgds,
-drc