Re: [idn] IDNs in email message bodies

[Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com>]

At 00.50 -0500 01-03-26, John C Klensin wrote:
>--On Monday, 26 March, 2001 07:30 +0200 Patrik Fältström
><paf@cisco.com> wrote:
>
>>...
>>  I also heard that it is extremely important that a user which
>>  (for example) receive a domainname which is in ACE, can
>>  cut&paste, reply (to an email) etc. And that these abilities
>>  are more important than correct display. This means for me
>>  that if an application detects the ace, and is "unsure" of how
>>  to display some of the characters -- it is better if the
>>  application does NOT convert from ace. This so it is sure that
>>  the domainname is not destroyed. Also, if the conversion is
>>  happening only for display, the underlying storage in memory
>>  can still have the non-converted ace all the time, so
>>  regardless of what is displayed, it is the ace which is copied
>>  and pasted etc.
>>...
>
>As long as you assume that all devices connected to the Internet
>will be able to render (and probably input/accept) ASCII...

Yes, for the first part of this paragraph. What I tried to write was 
that an application which is running in some operating system 
environment which today normally is a windowing system of some kind 
have to be extremely careful when throwing away information. The 
window system might not be able to handle ascii, and it might not be 
able to handle the characters which are encoded in ascii. All 
permutations can exists.

Because of this, keeping the internal storage in whatever encoding is 
used originally is "a good thing".

If this is ace, the only thing that is needed is that the internal 
storage in the application can handle ascii, and that that storage is 
not destroyed when converting to and from whatever display one use -- 
and that for example the clipboard also can handle ascii.

But, as I said, I am happy to receive whatever text is needed to 
clearify things.

Including large warning labels.

   paf