Re: [idn] WG last call summary

[Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>]

> > The transition issues for IDNA that actually pertain to Internet
> > protocol behavior have been described repeatedly and are identical
> > with the kind of changes that were required to adopt MIME.
> 
> I can see why you'd want to say that, but it's a poor analogy.
> 
> MIME imposed structure on unstructured data by using a subset of values,
> and specifically limiting itself to particular technologies. I mean, even
> RFC2047 only allowed some particular kinds of data (mostly unstructured)
> to be extended, and marked structured data as off-limits. 

more precisely, RFC 2047 was intended only for human-readable text, 
because at the time we hadn't figured out how to solve the various 
problems associated with having multiple representations of 
machine-readable text.

today we have a much better idea for how to do that.

I agree with Dave that IDNA is very similar to things we did with MIME
in both the header and the message body, and I think the experience
with MIME will be a good predictor of experience with IDNA.  

Keith