Re: Just send UTF-8 with nameprep (was: RE: [idn] Reality Check)

[Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>]

> At 12:24 01/07/17 -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
> > > As I have remarked earlier, we don't need this WG to allow
> > > people to create random domain name labels. ACE is not
> > > 'domain names just as they are'. It's a clear layer violation.
> >
> >ACE is an *encoding" just like UTF-8 is an *encoding*.
> 
> Sorry, no. ACE can be reapplied to ACE (the drafts of course prohibit this),
> but please try to apply UTF-8 to UTF-8. 

I fail to see how this is relevant.

> Also, ACE is used piecemeal. 

That's true.  ACE is an encoding, but is not a general purpose encoding.
It's designed for a narrow but important purpose, and it's sufficiently ugly 
that you really would not want to use it except when necessary.  But there 
are cases where it is necessary. 

> >The other thing that you're leaving out is the additional complexity that
> >would be required to add UTF-8 negotiation to existing applications that
> >could not be expected to deal with UTF-8 names.
> 
> The main application that really needs this is SMTP. Most others don't.

that's simply false.  any deployed application that exchanges DNS names
as protocol elements needs ACE if those deployed codes are expected to
interoperate (and exchange DNS names) with new codes that use IDNs. 

true, there are sometimes other ways to solve the problem than ACE - 
explicit negotiation for instance.  But this isn't feasible with all
applications, and it's very unattractive for most of those in which it is
feasible.

Keith