RE: [idn] Adding "optional" characters in draft-ietf-idn-nameprep

["McDonald, Ira" <imcdonald@sharplabs.com>]

Hi Harald and Edmon,

Right - UTF-8 is the preferred encoding in all
Internet protocols and one of two (along with UTF-16)
for the W3C XML standards family - simply the best
choice over-the-wire.

Cheers,
- Ira McDonald, consulting architect at Xerox and Sharp
  High North Inc

-----Original Message-----
From: Harald Alvestrand [mailto:Harald@Alvestrand.no]
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2000 3:38 PM
To: Edmon; idn@ops.ietf.org
Subject: Re: [idn] Adding "optional" characters in
draft-ietf-idn-nameprep 


At 16:03 15/08/2000 -0400, Edmon wrote:
> > machines need to know how to translate IDNs from whatever
> > encoding they use into unicode/10646 (for queries) and back
> > (for address lookups).
> >
>
>That is very reasonable... why then is it not a good idea to tag the
>encoding as we have suggested in a standard and easily recognizable way?

it is not a good idea to move the nonstandard encodings over the Internet.
As I told you before: if you use an encoding with someone, you have to have 
an agreement to use this encoding.
If you use an encoding without private agreement on the Internet, you 
require the whole Internet to understand this encoding.

Don't send multiple encodings across the Internet.

                  Harald

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, alvestrand@cisco.com
+47 41 44 29 94
Personal email: Harald@Alvestrand.no