Re: [idn] universal typability

[James Seng <jseng@pobox.org.sg>]

Bill,

No, I do not speak as "co-chair" or as "CTO". I speak for myself and myself
alone. I believe IETF participation has always been on individual basis
without affliation. 

My comments stands irregardless what "hats" you think I am wearing. This does
not change the fact that any 8-bit solution (like the one you proposed) has
problems with interoperability and that MSIE solution is not complete.
However, I am open to listen to any proposal to make it work, in a reasonable
fashion but not "just send UTF-8" or "Microsoft uses UTF-8 so it must be
right". 

I will also be glad if you can prove my statement technically wrong because I
wish I am wrong about MSIE. But shooting it down because it is "politically
wrong" does no good for a technical WG nor add any value to the technical
discussion.

-James Seng

"J. William Semich" wrote:
> I assume in your comments below you have taken off your hat as
> "co-chairman" and are speaking as CTO for i-dns.net, correct? <smile>
> 
> Bill Semich
> >.NU Domain
> 
> At 09:35 AM 3/17/00 +0800, James Seng wrote:
> >What you describe is not a problem with ASCII compatiblity encoding scheme.
> >
> >For the record, %HH encoding scheme was designed for the <path> side of URL
> >and not the <hostname>. Therefore, by strict implementation, %HH in hostname
> >should not have work, on any broswer.
> >
> >The real problem is lack of standardisation with IDN and people went off
> their
> >own ways to do IDN, thus causing inconsistency. This is why this WG is so
> >important.
> >
> >-James Seng
> >
> >ps: the reason why MSIE works for UTF-8 domain names is because MSIE act
> smart
> >to do a conversation with UTF-8 for domain names. It seem cool to be able to
> >do multilingual domain names. But this is not a prove that UTF-8 in URL is
> >okay because it is not. There are a lot of bugs and problems if you look into
> >this more carefully. For example, try typing the sample domain name provided
> >into a Chinese MSIE broswer. Or try Chinese URL (take it from
> www.idns.org) on
> >a English MSIE. And there are also a few buggy downcasing by MSIE which cause
> >'wrong' UTF-8 been send out.
> >
> >Spend a little more time understanding the consequences with MSIE UTF-8
> domain
> >name and the picture are not so rosy anymore.
> >
> >Dan Oscarsson wrote:
> >> This show one of the problems Kent is talking about.
> >> A URL like: http://www.gås.net/gås.html
> >> could look like: http://www.8wahdfhud.net/g%c3%a5s.html
> >> if we use an opaque scheme for domain names.
> >> The %-encoding should not be used in the domain name part.
> >> Think about the mess otherwise:
> >>   Should I do ftp www.8wahdfhud.net or www.g%c3%a5s.net?
> >>   Why does ftp www.8wahdfhud.net work but not ftp www.g%c3%a5s.net.
> >>   But in my browser ftp://www.g%c3%a5s.net/ does work.
> >>
> >> If we use ASCII compatibility encodings, the same object must
> >> be encoded using the same scheme everywhere, if possible.
> >> What a mess otherwise.
> >>
> >>    Dan
> >
> >
> Bill Semich
> President and Founder
> >.NU Domain Ltd
> http://whats.nu
> bill@mail.nic.nu