Re: [idn] Planning ahead for good IDNs

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

> | There seems to be widespread agreement, even among ACE proponents,
> | that we will _eventually_ move to UTF-8 domain names.
> There is?

Apparently so. I see a few people saying that big-endian UCS-4 would be
better, but none of them claim that Internet protocols are actually
going to move in that direction.

> There still seem to be at least three credible camps:  ACE only, ACE
> transition, and UTF-8 only.

I don't see any serious support for the ACE-now-and-forever position.

The rest of us, the UTF-8 people and the ACE-now-UTF-8-later people, all
agree that some programs are going to have to be fixed. Sendmail's
address handling should be made 8-bit-clean, for example, and cc:Mail
should allow 255-byte local parts and 255-byte domain names.

The IDN WG can and should issue an immediate warning for implementors.

---Dan