Re: [idn] UTF-8 / RACE

[Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com>]

--On 01-05-29 05.23 +0000 "Adam M. Costello" <amc@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:

>> The answer is that ACE conversion has to happen somewhere between the
>> user's command lines and the DNS packets. Changing the gethostbyname()
>> code is easier than changing every program that uses gethostbyname().
> 
> If gethostbyname() receives 8-bit text, should it assume that it's
> UTF-8, or should it assume that it's in the encoding of the current
> locale?  My gut feeling is the latter.  And of course gethostbyname()
> should use the same encoding for both the argument and the return value.

I start feeling like a parrot...repeating myself over and over and over
again.

The problem is NOT the DNS protocol or gethostbyname() or such, the problem
are all the applications while using some application layer protocol, and
what charset they are going to use when passing around what they belive is
a domainname.

Not all operating systems and applications (far from the majority) use
Unicode of some encoding locally, so a conversion need always to happen.
All applications have to be changed.

   paf