Re: [idn] IDNA in real life

[Mats Dufberg <dufberg@nic-se.se>]

On Feb 3, 2002, 17:04 (+0100) Dan Oscarsson <Dan.Oscarsson@trab.se> wrote:

> There is really no between stage. I cannot do an incremental upgrade.
> It is unacceptable to require people to enter or see ACE encoded names
> in the commonly used places. This includes URLs, log files, /etc/hosts,
> DNS zone files and configuration files.

That is your assumption. In the beginning system administrators will
accept to enter domain namnes in ACE in configuration files of web
servers, namn servers, mail servers etc. Soon there will be interfaces
that let people enter DNS data in local character set in source zone
files, which will be converted to zone files in the generic format of
bind. And the same will happen to other servers, or servers will be
updated.

> As IDNA promotes the use of ACE, many vendors with little understanding
> for the need of non-ASCII characters will just use ACE, I can expect
> a long wait before applications handle native host names instead of ACE
> unless you can force it on them by for example changing the resolver
> library.

I don't think that your assumption will come true. Next version of Windows
NT (whatever it is called) will have a nameserver with support of the
local character set.


> Neither would UTF-8, but as the break
> with the ASCII world would be much more apparent I would expect
> applications to be fixed quicker.

I prefer ugly ACE domain names rather than total break down. :-)



Mats

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Mats Dufberg <dufberg@nic-se.se>
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