RE: [idn] Reality Check

["Brian W. Spolarich" <briansp@walid.com>]

| What does the normal human beings of the real world expect from DNS?
| The semantics of current DNS says:
| - a name can have mixed upper and lower case letters
| - names will be matched case insensitively
| IDNA says:
| - a name can only be in lower case
| - names will be matched exactely
| So IDNA breaks current semantics of DNS.

  This isn't an entirely correct statement.  Names after nameprep are folded
to lower case for purposes of comparison to ensure that the
case-insensitivity requirement is preserved.  Users can enter names in mixed
case, and nameprep+a case preserving ACE could preserve this in the ACEd
name.  These semantics are essentially preserved in the current
IDNA+nameprep+DUDE recommendation, and could be enhanced to preserve case in
the ACE->IDN conversion step.

  Dan, you've mentioned elsewhere in this message that the IDNA approach is
flawed because it assumes that no one wants to update their DNS servers.

  IDN is not a DNS problem.  It is an applications-that-use-the-DNS problem.

  Given that you're going to have to update many applications to properly
handle IDNs, why not only update the applications?

  I think one area where the IDNA document currently falls down is in not
providing enough discussion on where IDNs will be in native form and where
they will be in ACE form.  I think much of the confusion in this discussion
arises from that point.

  -bws