Re: [idn] NSI Multilingual Testbed Information (fwd)

[James Seng <James@Seng.cc>]

"J. William Semich" wrote:
> Let me put this another way:
> 
> The IETF has taken two identifiable actions WRT UTF-8:
> 
> 1. It has designated UTF-8 as the preferred protocol for IDN in the BCP,
> RFC 2277 (No matter whether used in a Standard or in a BCP, the word "MUST"
> looks like strong language to me);

No where in RFC2277 mention anything about IDN specically. Please point
me to where you found it.
 
> 2. It has actually set a standard for (or has put on a standards track)
> UTF-8 itself under RFC 2279.

UTF-8 is a standard. Application of it may/need not be.

> I have not been able to find any actions by IETF WRT an ACE for IDN, either
> as a stand-alone Standard in and of itself, or as a recommended protocol
> (not to mention a "MUST") in a BCP.
>
> So, apart from the fact that UTF-8 has much to recommend it technically for
> use in IDNs, is it so surprising that the decision would be made to use
> UTF-8 in the protocol when developing an implementation of IDN?

You are bending the word 'standard' too much here. e.g. ASCII was
recommended as the preferred IETF I-D submission. And ASCII is also both
an ISO & ANSI standard other than IETF. I suppose this makes ASCII a
good standard to adopt for other protocols. And hence, ACE is a purely
standard. (This argument is moot if you see what I mean)

Now, back to UTF-8. Many of us have trying to get some clue into you
here that doing IDN is not 'just-send-utf8'. And there are many other
good proposal on how to do use UTF-8 too but yours is not one of them,
IMHO. 

Secondly, you are once again barking at the wrong tree on what is
important now. UTF-8 vs ACE is only one aspect of the problem. There are
normalization, comparsion, etc. And there are reverse domain. And there
are also deployment and integration etc etc.

While I do not believe the WG should let what NSI, i-DNS.net, Microsoft
etc does affects our technical design, there is certain pressure for us
to move even faster. Lets drop this topic move on to more important
things and get back to our work as soon as we can.

-James Seng