Re: [idn] WG last call summary

[Dave Crocker <dhc@dcrocker.net>]

At 12:04 AM 3/15/2002 +0000, Adam M. Costello wrote:
>For a long time, domain names have in practice contained only ASCII
>characters.  There is bound to be software that breaks when fed
>non-ASCII domain names.  If a program outputs non-ASCII domain names
>that are fed to unprepared software, things will break.  If a program

In fact the elegence of IDNA is that it continues to pass around ascii 
characters to all but a very limited portion of the system.

With respect to DNS, the only software that must deal with the extended 
character set(s) are:

1.  The module that inputs the string to be stored,

2.  The module that inputs the string to be looked up

3.  The module that output a string

Changes to #1 and #2 are only required when the input string is not ascii.

Changes to #3 are required only if presentation in the extended character 
set are required.

Failure to change #3 breaks nothing.

Failure to change #1 or #2 does not break anything, though of course it 
limits the available character sets to the legacy ASCII-only world.

As to non-DNS software that interface with DNS, note that making a change 
to any of the DNS modules requires that the programmer pay attention to the 
environment it is used in.

Other than that, there are no breakage risks.

d/


----------
Dave Crocker <mailto:dave@tribalwise.com>
TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850