Re: [idn] Why follow IDNA with UTF-8?

[Martin Duerst <duerst@w3.org>]

At 09:13 01/07/15 -0700, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
>At 10:59 AM -0500 7/15/01, Eric A. Hall wrote:
>>Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:

>>For specific applications, there are natural benefits. Perhaps HTML v99
>>will say "all URLs must be UTF8" just so state doesn't have to be
>>maintained between browsers and servers.
>
>Sorry, but that doesn't answer the question, and it instead raises a straw 
>man that is untrue. What would be the advantage to end users of HTML v99 
>not interoperating with HTML v98? Also, IDNA does not require any state to 
>be maintained between browsers and servers.

Talking about HTML v99 or HTML v98 is a complete strawman indeed.
But let's talk about HTML 4.0. In HTML 4.0, there is a provision that
says that URIs that contain non-ASCII characters should be interpreted
based on conversion to UTF-8 (which is a slight, but very important
difference from 'all URIs must be UTF-8). And there is no old HTML
that contains IDNs.

And the newest versions of the main browsers support this convention.
And there is no need for state to be maintained between browsers and
servers; that's not what the HTTP protocol is about.

The Web and the W3C took RFC 2277 seriously. We are ready for UTF-8,
we don't need ACE at all. For HTML and the Web (also including XML,
XML Schema, XLink,...), ACE is useless baggage.


Regards,   Martin.

#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, I18N Activity Lead, World Wide Web Consortium
#-#-#  mailto:duerst@w3.org   http://www.w3.org/People/D%C3%BCrst