Re: [idn] An experiment with UTF-8 domain names

[Martin Oldfield <m@mail.tc>]

Thank you for your clarification. I was trying to find out to what
extent UTF-8 and ACE would be interoperable with existing, rather than
upgraded systems. I really think that this is the important
consideration, because I think everyone agrees that if all the world
used either system then it would work.

>From what you've said, it seems clear to me that for email IDNs
containing a byte in the range \200 through \237, would be
significantly less useful under a UTF-8 system than under an ACE
encoding. Obviously my definition of useful puts gives more weight to
`can exchange email with people who have old software' than to `will
display the IDN correctly'. 

Whilst I quite accept that you might order these things differently,
I'd quite like to sort out in my own mind the pros and cons of the two
encodings. Please could you tell me if you think that UTF-8 would
display the IDN correctly in more places, whilst ACE would pass
through more of the existing infrastructure without error ?

Cheers,
-- 
Martin Oldfield,
AdamsNames Ltd.