Re: [idn] I fear I cannot use IDN in the next 10 years

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

> >Looking out the rear-view mirror, this is true. Looking out the
> >front-windshield, this is not true.
> 
> no doubt your base of experience permits you to speak with such
> certitude.  those of us who have worked on Internet technology for less
> time, say only 20 or 30 years, find that such predictions are usually
> wrong.  sometimes right, but usually wrong.

My "base of experience" gives me an ability to follow current activities
well enough to see that there is more active development for UTF-8 than
any other charset. Do you dispute this? I can infer nothing else from your
comments above.

> The physics of upgrading a large, infrastructure-critical service
> dictate a text-based encoding scheme.

Debating this point requires more context. Certainly IP, BGP and many of
the other "large, infrastructure-critical services" don't rely on
text-based encodings. DNS itself is 8-bit clean, and only uses a
text-based encoding for payload data, and that's only to support the
legacy HOSTS.TXT requirements.

What particular aspect of UTF-8 isn't "text-based" anyway? DNS itself
doesn't even use a text-based encoding (supporting 0x00-0x1F and 0x80-0xFF
natively) by the yardstick you seem to be applying.

> It simply has no effect on significant system performance issues, other
> than transparency to the existing system... if an ACE is used. 

Transparency to users, admins and developers is also important. Think
about ACE in terms of everyday usage scenarios, particularly in markets
and development environments where people are trying to internationalize
their networks and services. The educational and implementation burden of
an ACE-only approach is massive. Worse, it is perpetually massive.

Allowing the users and developers to lower their implementation costs in a
non-disruptive form should be considered as our duty. Preventing it
without reasonable cause is pointless.

> UTF-8, on the other hand, will nicely break the existing system.

Dan J. is not arguing for UTF-8 *ONLY*. That's a non-starter. The UDNS
proposal allows for a dual-mode structure, one of which is ACE for
legacy-systems compatibility, the other of which is a UTF-8 for future
application support. They are COMPLEMENTARY.

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