Re: [idn] Future difficulties because of IDNA

[Dave Crocker <dhc@dcrocker.net>]

At 03:54 PM 1/29/2002 +0100, Dan Oscarsson wrote:
>  While I very much
>dislike solutions layered on top of ASCII due to inefficiency and
>due to the big problem with application developers that never
>understands that you always must translate from the ASCII layer to
>native encoding before interacting with users.

MIME has not suffered the fate you claim is inevitable, yet is the same 
design approach as IDNA.


>As Patrik said, there is no consensus on the namedroppers list.
>Actually there is very little response except from Erik.

Lack of response on a mailing list usually means that people do not feel 
that the issue being raised is worth responding to.  In other words, it is 
an implicit vote of no confidence for the concern or suggestion being raised.


>If you also allow IDNA servers,

There will be no IDNA servers.

DNS servers do not need to be modified to support IDNA.  IDNA is supported 
by the software that creates the string and the software that does the 
query.  The software that services DNS requests and holds DNS data does not 
need modification.


>the IDNA servers can only give the
>correct anser if the query is in ACE.

This is not correct.


> >> 2) DNSSEC will probably be much more complex to handle due to
> >>    having both ACE encoded and native UCS labels.
>
>The complexity here is what I found out from my talk with Erik. You
>might get away from most of it. In short this is because DNSSEC
>signs RR-sets and with both UCS and ACE

Oh.  You mean that IDNA adds complexity, when (and if) we try to introduce 
an encoding that is more efficient.  (Please remember that 8-bit unicode is 
still an encoding.)

You are therefore making that claim that it is more complex to have an 
"interim" scheme.  Well, duh.

It is the nature of transitions that they incur "inefficiencies", if the 
transition is done in a way that preserves the installed base.

So the bottom line is that IDNA does not, itself, creates any special 
concerns for DNSSec, contrary to you claim.


At 09:31 AM 1/29/2002 +0100, Dan Oscarsson wrote:
>I see a risk that IDNA will kill native support for internationalisation
>of DNS.

Apparently you are unaware that 8-bit unicode is not at all more "native" 
than IDNA.  Both are encodings.  One is a bit more efficient, but requires 
creating an entirely new infrastructure.  The other works on the existing 
infrastructure.

d/

----------
Dave Crocker  <mailto:dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking  <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253;  fax +1.408.273.6464