Re: [idn] Re: 7 bits forever!

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld@dkuug.dk>]

On Tue, Apr 02, 2002 at 09:56:44AM -0500, Edmon Chung wrote:
> I think the issue here is how we can plan a better transition than what we
> have done for SMTP.
> That is, if we start thinking about "8+ everywhere" instead of "ACE
> everywhere" scenario, then how we can get there from here. That is the
> question for the IDN group I believe.

Well, I think SMTP was very successful in getting to 8-bits everywhere.
Or almost everywhere. Today ESMTP is the predominant protocol for email
exchange. And this was really not in the cards when we designed the 
MIME stuff. The predominant policy at those times was  "use 7-bit
generally, and 8-bit locally", the so-called "enclave" model. 
I was amongst the most vocal proponents af a general 8-bit email
exchange protocol, the one that emerged as ESMTP. I remember being
at IETF in Santa Fé 1992-ish, where we discussed this, and I was the
only European around when it was asked if somebody, especially from
Europe, really wanted a general 8-bit exchange protocol. And I raised
my voice and insisted. So it was not really questioned anymore
and ESMTP was produced. But mostly as a courtesy to the Europeans.
Sometimes you can make a difference:-)

I think getting to >8bit is a non-starter, as per IESG policies
that promotes utf-8 as the primary encoding in protocols.
And I really do not see why we should open up to a myriad
of charsets (being the author of rfc 1345 I need to stress that:-)
We have one, we can deal with two, not many.

What we have now is a restricted ASCII for DNS, and we want to
go to a restricted utf-8. And nothing else. And we want the
backwards compatibility and operation between ascii and utf-8
so we can ensure a happy migration and coexistance.

Best regards
Keld