Re: [idn] UTF-8 / RACE

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

James Seng/Personal writes:
> What is considered a "bad names"?

Read the page: ``An uppercase ... is guaranteed to cause confusion: when
the uppercase Alpha is printed properly, it looks just like an uppercase
A. Some other strings are also guaranteed to cause confusion. There's a
complicated definition of good names among all Unicode strings. Good
names won't be confused with each other. Registrars won't allow
registration of bad names.''

Good names are the same concept as the output of nameprep, except that
the current nameprep specification is flawed---it doesn't handle Alpha,
for example.

> Lets expand this to any non-UTF-8 applications which uses Domain Names.

No. The issue is specific to text-mode programs that need to know the
width of their output, such as full-screen tty MUAs. A few of these
programs don't support UTF-8 yet.

> It is too early to suspect how I18N Email will look like to decide
> what changes would be required in sendmail but I suspect making it 8-bit
> clean as you suggested here is probably needed if UTF-8 are use in IDN.

You are confused. The changes I specified are necessary and sufficient.

> But most important of all, you left out the needs to 'patch/replace' the
> keyboard

No, I didn't leave it out. Read the page.

---Dan