[idn] What's wrong with skwan-utf8?

["D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>]

I've reviewed the archives and relevant drafts. I don't understand the
objections to skwan-utf8.

The idea, in short, is for applications to translate user input from the
local character set to (lowercase) UTF-8, then use UTF-8 in DNS packets.
What's the problem?

idn-compare says that this ``doesn't work with many exiting [sic]
protocols that relies [sic] on DNS.'' Which protocols? What exactly is
so difficult about allowing UTF-8 in those protocols too?

A few people on the mailing list have commented that particular pieces
of software would need to be changed to handle UTF-8. So change them!
The total number of lines of code is small. Nobody has come up with a
proposal that would give users IDNs with less overall effort.

---Dan