Re: [idn] I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-idn-uri-00.txt

[Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>]

> Keith Moore writes:
> > You posted an example where you claimed that your software would have
> > trouble,
> 
> False.

The fact that the bugs are detected elsewhere is hardly a justification
for poor design choices in your software, especially when those choices
exceed the design limitations that are documented in the mail protocol
specifications. 

> > the presumption is that ACE IDNs will cause less trouble than UTF-8
> > IDNs.
> 
> Actually, people have been claiming that ACE IDNs will cause no trouble
> at all, and suggesting this as a litmus test for IDN solutions.

Such claims are obviously exaggerated.  Any IDN scheme will 
cause some degree of disruption, the question is how much.  

> As for the frequency and severity of failures: What matters is the
> software involved in deliveries _where IDNs appear_. People likely to
> use IDNs are also people likely to have already moved to 8-bit-clean
> software---because 8-bit data shows up all the time in Subject lines,

8-bit data does show up all the time in Subject lines, and in other
fields.  It is also quite often mangled beyond recognition, due to
a combination of software that is unable to cope with 8 bit text,
software that attempts to convert 8-bit text to RFC 2047 form, and
software that tries to perform character set conversions on such
text without knowing the original character set.

> > But (assuming careful choice of the ACE) few ACE IDNs are likely to be
> > significantly longer than UTF-8 IDNs,
> 
> That simply isn't true. A 10-byte limit causes much more trouble for the
> ACE proposals than for UTF-8. Try some examples!

A 10-byte limit causes trouble for lots of ordinary domain names, so
I fail to see how this is terribly significant.

Keith