Re: [idn] Requirements I-D

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

At 12:08 PM -0700 5/15/00, A. Vine wrote:
>no matter what standard chart of case folding you come up, _including_ the
>existing ASCII case-folding, you will leave several languages/locales with
>incorrect folding.

Languages/locales aren't the ones doing the folding; the DNS is. To 
be more precise, the DNS will use incorrect folding for some 
languages and locales. The only alternative is to mark every domain 
name kept in the DNS with language/locale info *and* require every 
user who is entering a domain name for resolution to say which 
language/locale the creator of that domain name used. The former is 
very, very, difficult; the latter is literally impossible. (I would 
be happy to be proven wrong on this!)

>   In addition to potentially causing problems and confusion in
>the domain naming world, it will also serve to annoy people, committees, and
>national standards bodies from various parts of the world.

There will not be confusion in the domain naming world. Everyone will 
be able to easily and unambiguously determine what will happen to any 
given input name after case-folding. This will certainly annoy people 
and so on; so does the lack of internationalized domain names.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium