Re: [idn] Debunking the ACE myth

[Dan Oscarsson <Dan.Oscarsson@trab.se>]

Patrik said:

>--On 01-07-18 06.46 +0000 "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to> wrote:
>
>> What went wrong is that the browser displayed the address as Unicode
>> characters. The address then passed through the (CTEXT UTF-8, although
>> UTF8_STRING would be better) copy-and-paste mechanism, the UTF-8 xterm,
>> the mail client, and the 8-bit-clean MTA, none of which converted back
>> to ACE. The resulting UTF-8 DNS lookup produced NXDOMAIN.
>
>In the IDNA proposal we have specified that an application which handle
>IDNA (like you seem to say that the browser is) only support IDNA if also
>the content of the clipboard is converted to ACE before the domainname is
>passed to other applications (which doesn't handle IDNA/ACE solution).
>

In that case IDNA is impossible. It is impossible for a browser to know
what text in a web page is a host name. A host name can occur anywhere in
the text of a document. And I can cut and paste any part of it.
It will be impossible or a browser to identify what parts are host names
and ACE encode them.
Also quite confusing for a user if it should happen, because when they
copy and paste a host name from the browser into a mail application the
pasted text is suddenly totally different.

   Dan