RE: [idn] Reality Check

["Russ Rolfe" <rrolfe@windows.microsoft.com>]

Let me first apologize for not answering sooner.  First my message that
showed up on Saturday was actually sent on Wednesday.  Some kind soul
re-submitted my E-mail and E-mail address to allow me to contribute
again to the list.

Adam M. Costello wrote:

> Are you arguing that ACE is unnecessary?  

Yes

> If so, please explain how email 
> is going to work.  What is supposed to happen when IDN-capable person
A 
> sends a message to IDN-capable person B, who then forwards the message
to 
> IDN-incapable person C, who would like to reply to A?  

To follow my example given.  In the past when people did not have
matching E-mail systems, person C would send the reply back to person B
to forward it on to person A.  Not efficient, but the message got back
to person A.  Thus it would work the same IDN-incapable person C would
send to IDN-capable person B who would forward it to Person A. 

Another solution is if Person A also has a non-IDN address, he can added
it to his signature (just like most of us add a phone number, address,
fax or other way to communicate to our signature) and then person C can
E-mail his reply via the non-IDN address directly to person A.

If it is important enough for person C and A to continue with
communications, they either stay with the non-IDN address or person C
contacts his IT people and suggests that they need to upgrade their
system to allow him to communicate with person A via the IDN-address.

> What is supposed to 
> happen when IDN-capable people send email to mailing lists?  Are they 
> supposed to use their non-IDN address if there are any IDN-incapable 
> subscribers?  How will they know?

Same as mentioned above, during the transition, some people will have
both E-mail addresses, IDN and non-IDN, (by the way it is not unusual
for people to have and manage more than one E-mail address -- example
they have both a private and work related addresses) those who do, would
put their non-IDN and IDN address as part of their signature and those
who chose to reply to them would use the address they are capable of
using.

If it is a true mailing list, all the non-IDN subscribers who wish to
reply to the sender would actually send to the mailing-list and the
mailing list would forward it to the IDN address.  If the mailing list
didn't handle IDN addresses, the person with the IDN-address would know
from the very beginning because he would not get any replies (including
the one that said that he had joined) and would use his non-IDN address
to send to the mailing list.  He may then contact the mailing list owner
and ask why he doesn't handle IDN address and a long with other request,
the mailing list my be updated.

Again this is my whole point, if there is no pressure to upgrade, then
it will either take a long time (10 years or longer as people mention)
or it won't happen at all to move to UTF-8, and IMHO if we go with an
ACE only solution, it will never go away in the long run.  

I see no wrong asking users to take some of the responsibility of moving
to a new technology (i.e. having two addresses, adding a line as part of
the signature pointing to non-IDN address, requesting System-Operators
to upgrade)?  I know that this will be uncomfortable for users in the
beginning, but because of this, there will be more pressure to upgrade
to the new IDN standard and thus the final solution (UTF8) will be
reached sooner.

Regards, Russ
Microsoft -- rrolfe@microsoft.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Adam M. Costello [mailto:amc@cs.berkeley.edu] 
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2001 2:18 PM
To: idn@ops.ietf.org
Subject: Re: [idn] Reality Check


Russ Rolfe <rrolfe@windows.microsoft.com> wrote:

> ...people will use both IDN and non-IDN address until every they need 
> to communicate can...

Are you arguing that ACE is unnecessary?  If so, please explain how
email is going to work.  What is supposed to happen when IDN-capable
person A sends a message to IDN-capable person B, who then forwards the
message to IDN-incapable person C, who would like to reply to A?  What
is supposed to happen when IDN-capable people send email to mailing
lists?  Are they supposed to use their non-IDN address if there are any
IDN-incapable subscribers?  How will they know?

> I have read a lot of comments on this list that state that ACE is just

> an intermediate step to help us get to a UTF-8 solution.

I don't agree with those comments.  While I can see ACE becoming less
common over time, I wouldn't expect it to completely die out in the
forseeable future.

AMC