Re: [idn] UTF-8 / RACE

[Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com>]

--On 01-05-27 21.35 -0700 Sherin Alsoudani <sherinalsoudani@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> As 
> we wait for applications to display RACE properly, it will set us back
> for a  long while - that is the crux of the problem I am afraid of.
>
> For example, the number one Internet application in the Middle East today
> is  probably Microsoft Internet Explorer.  It already has support for
> UTF-8.  

You still don't recognize the difference many people on this mailing list
try to get through to you, which is that IF you use an ACE encoding the
enduser can himself control whether he is seeing the ACE encoded word or
not. In the case of UTF-8, he must wait for the system administrator to
upgrade software in the path of the information and upgrade his own
software. Because of this argument, introduction of IDN is arguably faster
with ACE than UTF-8.

You continue to say that software have already support for UTF-8, while you
point out the true statement that for arabic you don't differ between
casing of chararcters. This means that the software somewhere not only use
UTF-8 encoding, but also that some normalization is done somewhere (or
should happen somewhere). Because the kind of normalization that happens if
you want case insensitivity everyone need to agree on what normalization
scheme to use. That is what we in this group call nameprep.

When nameprep is finalized (and a decision is taken whether nameprep should
happen or not)  then you need to change all applications again, even though
you use UTF-8, just because the comparison algorithms need to be agreed
upon (and, no, existing UTF-8 software don't do this according to current
nameprep proposal).

   paf