RE: [idn] Reality Check

[John C Klensin <klensin@research.att.com>]

--On Saturday, 14 July, 2001 02:43 -0700 Russ Rolfe
<rrolfe@windows.microsoft.com> wrote:

> All thou I have been most of the time a silent observer, I
> agree here with Eric, and would to like to state the following:
> 
> 1. Since IDN is a new feature being added to the internet, most
> people    will accept the premise that to use a new feature,
> you will most    likely need to upgrade to some application or
> system that=20    supports the use of this feature.
> 
> 2. Before the Internet became the default carrier for E-mail,
> many    companies had some internal system that allowed
> electron mail.    With these E-mail packages people could send
> e-mail to some=20    people but not to all the people they
> wanted.  As the internet    became more accesses able to
> companies, people began to=20    request the ability to send to
>...

Russ,

It seems to me that your argument, with a very slight recasting
or none at all, would make at least as strong as case for one of
the major, "solve more of the problem" approaches -- search
systems and new DNS Class included-- than for embedding UTF-8 in
the existing, Class=IN DNS.  

To pick up on one part of your example, the companies that
managed to upgrade their mail systems to provide Internet gateway
capability did not put any of their existing uses at significant
risk, since the gateway should have been a clear add-on (this
was, of course, not the case with some software whose developers/
vendors took the upgrade process as an opportunity to introduce
other significant changes and a full complement of new bugs, but
that is a separate matter or should be).

Just an observation...

    john