Re: [idn] URL encoding in html page

[Dave Crocker <dhc@dcrocker.net>]

At 02:03 AM 4/3/2002 +0800, James Seng wrote:
> >Case 2: From IDNA A1 thru MIM to non-IDNA A2
> > >A2 receive ACE. But it is not able to understand ACE so it display the
>ACE as-it-is.
> >
> > So that we are clear:  nothing breaks.  The string is ugly, but it is
>legal
>
>"nothing breaks" is probably too strong. For some, "nothing" => resolution
>only, for others, display too.

James, "nothing breaks" is the precisely correct term.  It is highlights 
that protocol violations do not occur and software does not break.

I believe that the issue you are raising is that while software does not 
crash, the recipient user does not obtain the desired benefit.  And your 
are certainly correct.

However, we need to understand that the user does not receive benefit only 
because the user has not yet adopted the new standard.  It is difficult to 
complain about that, except to suggest to them that they will like the upgrade.

"Nothing breaks" means that an interaction between a user of the old 
technology and a user (or server or whatever) of the new technology does 
not break the protocol or software of either participant.


>I think it is reasonable to say A1 works for both resolution and display and
>A2 works for resolution but not display.

Exactly correct.  However we need to highlight that the DNS concerns 
resolution.  It does not really concern display.


> > >Case 3: From non-IDNA A1 thru MIM to IDNA A2
> > >
> > >A1 capability to handle IDN is unknown. It may send out as-is in whatever
> > >encoding the user specify.
>The behavior of non-IDNA A1 is totally unknown. It is likely to fail in
>resolution. The display may or may not work, depending on implementation.
>But I agree that this is an expected behavior of any application feed with
>data it is not able to process anyway.
>
>It is not my intention to specify how non-IDNA is going to behave.

James, forgive me, but I do not understand why the analysis is considering 
a component that is entirely outside the standard.  Components that do not 
participate in a standard are not relevant to a discussion about 
interoperability.

>Can we at least agree on the case example for IDNA? If we can, then we can
>draw up similar case examples for other proposal (UDNS, UTF-8 or what we
>have) and do a proper comparsion between them.

Sorry, no.  You are describing a node that is not conforming to Old Ascii 
and is not conforming to New IDNA.  Hence it is irrelevant to the IDNA effort.

d/


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