Re: [idn] iDNS re-chartering proposal, take 2

[Dave Crocker <dhc@dcrocker.net>]

At 05:18 PM 10/28/2001 -0600, Eric A. Hall wrote:
>It is certainly clear that scientific analysis is being sacrificed in
>favor of agenda manipulation and beauracracy, yes.

Ahh.  I see.  You have a complaint about working group process.

The procedures for redressing such grievances are well documented.  Please 
feel free to pursue them.  Note that a small amount of complaining on the 
working group mailing list is a legitimate part of that process, as a way 
of assessing support for your complaint.  However I suspect that you are 
already long beyond that part.


> > uDNS a) is not a complete specification, and b) imposes operational
> > requirements that are not viable in the existing DNS infrastructure.
>
>IPv6 is different from IPv4, OSPF was different from RIP, IMAP is
>different from POP, why is anybody surprised that a UTF-8 DNS which
>provides a top-to-bottom internationalized DNS is going to be different
>from a hostname-restricted IDNA?

No one is surprised that "UTF-8 DNS", whatever that means, might be 
different from the existing DNS.  However surprise or not is irrelevant to 
the current discussion.

The key point is that, after two years of debate, it is time to declare 
that changes to the core DNS protocols, including changes to official 
character representation by that core, is no longer the technical path 
being pursued for near-term support of internationalized characters.  The 
approach to be taken is  to have end-system encapsulation, in the style of ACE.


> > How very strange.  Some of the proposals do not want a single technical
> > specification, or they do not want to stop researching?
>
>What's so wrong with multiple complementary specifications?

What is wrong with that approach is that it does not work.

Please review the last 11 years of IETF history, in particular the results 
of its trying to support multiple "complementary" (but actually competing) 
specifications, versus the results of choosing a single specification.  By 
contrast, review the stellar history of the equivalent OSI protocols, since 
they very much attempted to provide support of multiple alternatives, as 
you desire.


>Why are you committed to a single specification which only serves a single 
>objective of legacy compatibility and which does so at the expense of 
>every protocol and application yet to be written?

It serves both legacy compatibility AND the primary objective of 
internationalized characters.

Your assessment that it does so at some sort of unspecified cost to some 
set of unspecified protocols, that will be created at some unspecified 
times and for some unspecified set of functions, is quite seriously 
irrelevant to the current  requirements.

d/

----------
Dave Crocker  <mailto:dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking  <http://www.brandenburg.com>
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