Leaving out scripts (Re: Unicode versions (Re: Criteria for exceptional characters))

[Gervase Markham]

Mark Davis wrote:
> That's a good point. I would point out however, that if my browser isn't 
> updated at least every few months for security problems, I have a 
> *whole* lot more to worry about than whether I can see mixed scripts or 
> not, so the lag is in practice not that bad.

It's not just browsers which see IDN domains. There are people out there 
using Outlook Express from 1997.

Perhaps it's easier to look at it the other way. If we suddenly decided 
that the hyphen was a massive security risk, and all clients which dealt 
in any way with domain names had to be updated to display it as an 
underscore, how long before the world is safe?

> And I see baking it into 
> the protocol (IDNA) as the least flexible of these in terms of delay, 
> since that takes years to change.

I agree.

Gerv