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

["Martin J. Duerst" <duerst@w3.org>]

At 00/12/29 13:54 -0500, John C Klensin wrote:
>Note that several of the above can lead, in especially unlucky
>cases, to finding a name other than the one the user intended
>and hence returning of results that represent a different host
>or resource than the one desired.  That type of error, which is
>hard to detect,

I agree that it may be hard to detect in some rare cases,
but in general, it will be detected quite easily. For the
Web, one will get a web page in a different language and
on a different subject than the original domain name.
For email, the chance that the same left-side name
exists on both domains is also low. There are probably
also quite some tests such as reverse lookup to reduce
these problems further.


>may, from a user or resource-provider
>standpoint, be worse than any of the other erroneous outcomes.

If it happens, it's definitely bad. There is also some
potential for misuse.


>We presume, but cannot prove, that seven-bit-only encodings will
>not have these problems because they will not trigger behavior
>based on the high order bit being unexpectedly turned on.  There
>are still possibilities, some based on incorrect code and others
>deriving from actions taken to avoid displaying characters that
>are not within the capabilities of local devices, of some of the
>same issues (especially variants on iii, iv, or vi) occurring
>with ACE-like encodings.

What I don't like here is the presumptions that 8-bit problems
will be severe, but 7-bit problems will be non-existent or
irrelevant. It would be good to have actual examples and
data here.

Regards,   Martin.