Re: [idn] Alternative Solutions

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

> I don't like this idea as much as ACE, for two reasons:  First, the
> mapping between LDH names and Unicode names cannot be done offline.
> Second, there is no guarantee that the mapping is consistent in the
> two directions (just as there is currently no guarantee of consistency
> between A and PTR records).  It has one advantage over ACE, though:  The
> LDH names can be chosen arbitrarily, and need not look like gibberish.

I think that this approach would be a major impediment to e-mail users;
after all, one of the main features of e-mail is that the user can
read/compose/reply mail offline, and connect only as and when required to
send/receive.

Alternatively, the e-mail application might be absolved of any code
transformation duties and leave that entirely up to the originating SMTP
server. Since most MUAs these days depend on a relay MTA and do not send
directly to destination hosts anyway, perhaps it might make sense to do the
code conversion at that particular relay MTA instead of at the MUA itself.

The MUA would have to be made aware of the MTA's code transformation
feature though; maybe this can be achieved by an SMTP extension. But I
digress; this is not the working group to do this. =)

maynard