Re: [idn] WG last call summary

[Paul Robinson <paul@iconoplex.co.uk>]

On Mar 18, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

> Hmm.. so you're saying that *ALL* that code out there that double-checked that
> things that claimed (possibly implicitly) to be USASCII were in fact in the
> 0-127 range are "crusty" code?

No. I'm saying that if a piece of software gets input that is unexpectedly 
'out of range' and then crashes and burns it is badly written. Sure, 
checking data is a good thing. Not checking it and letting things 'just 
break' is stupid. There are 14-year olds in high school in their second 
class of visual basic programming who know this.

To go back to the original argument, trying to put a stop on a standard
getting through because it breaks a piece of softwre written some time ago
that a small percentage of people use today is a dumb idea. OK, let's take
IDNA. How many people are there in China that would benefit from this
process? Let's say the population is 2 billion, and it would benefit 5%.  
That's 100 million people. How many people would be 'hurt' by the example
given breaking? Are there 100 million people out there who would be
affected? If yes, then the process needs to stop and take that into account.

To argue that it's upsetting the existing user base is also flawed - this is 
not about keeping things cosy for ourselves at a cost to those outside of 
the Latin alphabet. If somebody can show how this process will break things 
for the majority of users (in other words using IE 4 and above, with Outlook 
Express for mail), THEN it would be a good idea to question 
interoperability. I'm not saying that we should be considering IE and 
Outlook Express as de facto standards, just as a benchmark to how many 
people are likely to experience 'breakages' as a result of IDNA things being 
pushed through.
 
> What's wrong with this picture?

There's too much blue in it, and its skewed to the left a little. :-)

-- 
Paul Robinson