Re: [idn] Using a new class for IDN

[John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>]

--On Monday, 03 June, 2002 12:00 -0500 "Eric A. Hall"
<ehall@ehsco.com> wrote:

>> attempted blocking action (of which I am not accusing anyone
>> in particular, only noting that there have been far too many
>> suspicions along those lines in the WG))
> 
> Unfortunately, your role gives these kinds of statements a lot
> more weight than you probably intend them to have.

Eric, _I_ have been accused, loudly and repeatedly, of
intentionally attempting to block action.  That isn't true, and
I'm certainly not trying to give it weight.

> In response, I will say that the only blocking actions I have
> seen has been to shutdown critical analysis of IDNA. To wit:
> 
>> from the beginning -- they are infrastructure changes, not
>> quick fixes, and the WG has been focused on quick fixes.
> 
> Anybody who understands IDNA knows that it is anything but a
> quick fix.

I completely agree.  But I believe it is also correct to say
that the WG has tended, over its lifetime, to focus its
attention on things that appear to be quick fixes, in preference
to options that would take longer but that might be more
satisfactory.

> Oh sure, it lets registrars *sell* domains quickly, but its
> success with the user community hinges on every application in
> the world being upgraded to perform conversion. Furthermore,
> it is known that this will be a disruptive process which will
> absolutely cause interoperability failures. There is nothing
> fast or resolute about this. The only thing going for it is
> that it is backwards compatible. While that is a necessary
> attribute of any solution, it is not by itself a "quick fix"
> for anybody other than domain resellers.

Again, I agree.  But domain resellers, others who believe that
having "multilingual names" --somehow-- quickly are important,
and the fear that, if the WG doesn't do something... Right
Now... various sorts of interoperability catastrophies would
occur, have been the sources of huge pressures on the WG to try
to do _something_ that can be deployed quickly.   And "deployed"
has been defined in that context by ability to put names in
tables and get them back out.

One can believe that pattern was either good or bad, but I think
it is indisputable that the WG has been operating under pressure
--quite large by IETF averages-- to produce some solution
quickly.  Now, the fact that the WG has rejected the really
lousy solutions proposed as "quick fixes" is to its credit.
Similarly, it has avoided falling into the quick-fix traps that
would have permitted efficient use of some (typically
Latin-based) scripts other than English while pushing
non-Latin-based and non-alphabetic scripts even further back,
which is again to its credit.  And it has struck some sort of
balance between "quick" and careful consideration of
alternatives and implications which has certainly not been as
quick as some would like nor as careful as others would like --
if you subscribe to the principle that a successful consensus
position is one with which everyone is equally unhappy, IDNA may
be an excellent example.

> Most of the alternative proposals seemed to have recognized
> that. None of them have been attempts at derailing anything,
> AFAICT.

I don't think this is worth a long discussion at this stage, but
the accusations have been made and repeated, especially in the
direction of those of us who are concerned that IDNA (and
DNS-based solutions generally) will not satisfy the requirement
as seen by users, in the direction of some of those who have
focused strongly on issues with a small family of scripts or
languages, and in the direction of those who have proposed ideas
but not protocols (in the form of I-Ds that were detailed enough
to be analysed and seriously considered).

     john