Re: [idn] WG last call summary

["D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>]

James Seng writes:
> Particularly, it will explain why display of non-ASCII glyphs isnt as
> simple as "just use UTF-8 and everything is okay".

Here we go again: IDN WG co-chair James Seng responds to a discussion of
IDNA's flaws by attacking another proposal.

Think about that for a moment. IDNA has received massive objections
because it's horribly destructive. Seng has sent it to the IESG anyway.
How does he defend himself? By claiming that other proposals are worse.

What Seng fails to do is compare IDNA to the status quo. Sure, the
status quo forces sites to stick to ASCII, which is visually unpleasant
for many users. But the status quo also gets the mail delivered, makes
web links work, avoids the chaos and confusion that IDNA would produce,
avoids massive software upgrades and redeployment, etc.

Refusing to consider the status quo as an option is another way of
saying ``We have to _do something_.'' That's a recipe for the Internet
protocol suite to spiral down into a neverending nightmare. That's not
how the IETF works.

More importantly, in the absence of consensus, the status quo wins.
Something is seriously wrong when an internationalization proposal draws
objections from hundreds of Chinese-speaking users, for example.

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago

P.S. If you'd like to see an example of a serious UTF-8 IDN proposal,
try http://cr.yp.to/proto/idnc3.html.