Re: [idn] additional comments from draft-ietf-idnra-00.txt

[James Seng <James@Seng.cc>]

Dan,

You have misunderstood the intention of IDNRA. It is meant to be a
proposal to do IDN using Resolver & Application. There is no "D" (DNS)
component here.

-James Seng

Dan Oscarsson wrote:
> >At 10.35 +0800 00-08-29, James Seng wrote:
> >>a) They dont think whole picture of IDNRA is complete.
> >>    They feel there is some hidden field in RACE proposal
> >>    or else why not use UTF-8 on the DNS query & response.
> >
> >Because we don't want to have UTF-8 in names in application protcols
> >which is not defined to use 8bit characters.
> 
> But we want all protocols to go 8bit! (and most are).
> 
> >
> >>b) If there is no functional difference between UTF-8 &
> >>    RACE, then in this case, there is no reason to waste
> >>    CPU time to convert UTF-8 to RACE.
> >
> >There is a difference. RACE is 7bit only. UTF-8 is not. RACE can be
> >used in all (application) protocols we have today, UTF-8 can not. If
> >we go for UTF-8, _all_ application level protocols have to be
> >redefined, and some of them (like HTTP) will be VERY hard to take
> >care of.
> 
> HTTP is 8bit!!!!
> 
> >
> >A preliminary discussion with application area working group chairs
> >said that "domainnames in protocols should stay at 7bit, or go to
> >UTF-8" and further that "SMTP can be changed to handshake to UTF-8,
> >if fallback encoding exists and is well-defined, but HTTP will not be
> >fun due to the definition of URIs".
> 
> Yes, SMTP can be fixed easily.
> HTTP is already 8bit. There is no problem to use UTF-8 in URIs.
> Except for the stubborn group who think an URI can only be ASCII.
> I have used 8-bits in URLs for many years.
> 
> It is really high time that the ASCII only people let go of their idea
> that ASCII is everything. Most protocols can use 8 bits, most can
> easily use UTF-8 (which is not that efficient but we have it for the
> ASCII people. If will not help me who require ISO 8859-1 compatibility).
> 
> We cannot go on using ASCII forever just because some do not want to
> fix the old protocols.
> SMTP works over 8-bit channels. The protocol can easily be fixed with
> downgrading to ASCII.
> HTTP is 8 bits. There is no problem to allow all headers to be UTF-8
> and URLs to be UTF-8 (without any %-encodings).
> You just have to accept that the world is not just ASCII.
> 
> DNS is a protocol that can use all 8 bits and have since the beginning
> allowed 8 bits in domain names. Lets not put an ASCII layer on top
> of the binary just to avoid having to fix some software that currently
> only handles ASCII.
> 
> Lets have an open mind. Think UCS! Think non-ASCII.
> 
>    Dan