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Re: [idn] What's wrong with skwan-utf8?
- To: Rick H Wesson <wessorh@ar.com>, "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>
- Subject: Re: [idn] What's wrong with skwan-utf8?
- From: Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com>
- Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2000 09:08:27 +0100
- Cc: <idn@ops.ietf.org>
- Delivery-date: Mon, 25 Dec 2000 00:12:20 -0800
- Envelope-to: idn-data@psg.com
At 16.44 -0800 00-12-24, Rick H Wesson wrote:
>There are also a lot of of protocols that
>expect name parts to be in 7bit ASCII, SMTP and SNMP come to mind, the
>latter being one that is often found in embedded systems running critical
>network infractstructure.
SMTP, SNMP, IMAP, POP, HTTP just to mention a few.
They can be updated of course (and I think that is your point). The
Applications Area have created a small task-force(!) which is to
review the protocols in question to see what can be done with them to
see that they are internationalized. I.e. not only the domainname is
to be internationalized but most certainly other protocol elements
which are displayed to the user aswell. One example is the localpart
in email addresses.
We have to differ between implementations and protocol specifications
here. Many implementations of the above protocols happen to be able
to handle UTF-8, while others can not. Regardless of this, the
protocol spec have to be updated.
Also, there is a question whether UTF-8 is really what we should use.
UTF-8 is not much more different than any ACE encoding because it is
just yet another encoding of the 32 bit characters which is what many
people feel we should start to use instead of the 7-bit which we use
today. So, the transision is not from 7bit to 8bit, it is from 7bit
to 32bit clean transport, and that is a completely different issue.
The problem with skwan-utf8 is that it doesn't talk enough about the
implications on the application layer protocols which use domainname
protocol elements. I.e. IDN is not a DNS problem. It is an
application layer problem. DNS is already a binary transport, so if
this was only DNS, we could say asap that we should send 32bit
characters in the DNS protocol. DNS doesn't have to be changed.
paf
--
Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com> Internet Engineering Task Force
Area Director, Applications Area http://www.ietf.org
Phone: (Stockholm) +46-8-4494212 (San Jose) +1-408-525-0940
PGP: 2DFC AAF6 16F0 F276 7843 2DC1 BC79 51D9 7D25 B8DC