Re: [idn] Some thoughts...

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

At 3:43 PM -0500 11/17/00, John C Klensin wrote:
>So, to a first-order approximation, my guess is that "change app
>to decode ACE and present multilingual characters", "change app
>to call something besides 'gethostbyname' where the new interface
>does multilingual and maybe directory things", "change app to
>decode UTF-8 and present glyphs corresponding to IS 10646",
>"change app to call directory interface before calling
>'gethostbyname'", or mixtures of them, all have the same
>time-to-deploy periods.  It is too bad, really, but I don't find
>any of the "this can be deployed a lot faster than that"
>arguments very persuasive.

Those are not the only considerations, however. As we are discussing 
in the design team, there is a very real problem with some of the 
proposals: "change apps *and change all name servers* before the 
upgraded apps can work consistently" will have a longer 
time-to-deploy than any of the apps-only options you give above. To 
some extent, this is obvious: it takes longer to change set A and set 
S than it does to just change set A. But, beyond that, set S (the 
nameservers of the world) are not going to upgrade for a large 
variety of reasons, sound operational practice being one of them.

>So, let's do whatever we need to do just as quickly as we
>possibly can, but let's do it very well and with an understanding
>of long-term implications clearly in mind.  Every month we lose
>increases the risk of a second round of kludges and adds many
>users and machines who will be left behind or need to be
>converted --to something-- later.  But the "get a standard out
>early enough to control first deployment" window is closing
>rapidly, if not already over.

Amen, brother!

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium