Re: [idn] Moving forward

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

C C Magnus Gustavsson writes:
> There is a significant amount of people who demand ACE in the short
> term and another significant amount of people who demand UTF-8 in
> the long term.

I'd like to see a poll on the question of whether UTF-8 will be the
long-term IDN solution. I suspect we have consensus that it will be. The
only person arguing for ACE-forever is Keith ``Q-P forever'' Moore.

It will help us move forward if we have a clear UTF-8 goal in mind. We
can, for example, agree that sendmail's destruction of 8-bit characters
is a bug, and has to be fixed.

The real decision is between ACE-then-UTF-8 and a direct move to UTF-8.
There appear to be more people in this group supporting ACE-then-UTF-8.
However, (1) many people here have been misled by incorrect statements
of the costs of ACE and UTF-8, and (2) UTF-8 appears to be the de facto
standard for working IDN experiments today.

---Dan