Re: [idn] Debunking the ACE myth

["Eric A. Hall" <ehall@ehsco.com>]

> > Give me one example where it fails. Just one.
> 
> I'll give two.

You gave me two application failures, not protocol failures.

Try again.

> 1. an email message gets delivered to a flat file which is read by
> a user agent.  the process that delivers the message has no idea
> whether the user agent can support native IDNs or not, and this
> is subject to change at any time.

You're assuming that the headers won't have to signify content, and that
the SMTP folk won't consider this in protocol design. Considering the
store-and-forward nature of mail, this is absurd.

> 2. an HTML document is saved in a flat file on a disk.  the process
> that saves the file has no idea whether every browser that will ever
> be asked to read that file can properly support IDNs.

Compliant HTML has a version tag.

> on-the-fly format conversion adds it own set of problems.

Such as?

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/