Re: [idn] Internet Draft uname.txt

["Maynard Kang" <maynard@pobox.org.sg>]

> This is an excellent point.  We need to keep reminding ourselves that
> the problem goes beyond just DNS.  If I receive mail addressed to me and
> various other people with IDN addresses, what goes in the To: field?
> Will today's version of the sender's software handle that?  And will
> today's version of my software allow me to reply to everyone?

Mail applications will have to be upgraded too, along with other applications which have DNS dependencies.

Interestingly, I feel that there has been one erroneous assumption we have been making in this WG and it is that the solitary purpose for the input of a hostname into an application is for resolution of DNS RRs.

However, IDNs may appear in protocol exchanges or arbitrary data in affected applications and these IDNs may not be used for resolution purposes. The scenario you describe above is one such example - the To: field of an RFC822 message. 

The mail application (MUA) does not resolve the IDN within the To: field. Rather, it is the receiving MTA which does it. But yet, how the MUA formats the IDN within that RFC822 header is still important to us, and we do need to define that standard before vendors start doing their own thing and chaos would result.

Having said that, this discussion may not be in the scope of this WG (it belongs more to the Apps area, really) but perhaps the ADs would like to comment on this?

maynard