Confusability (Re: New version, draft-faltstrom-idnabis-tables-02.txt, available)

[Gervase Markham]

John C Klensin wrote:
> At the same time, it implies that different users are seeing
> different presentations under different circumstances and,
> indeed, that the same user may see different presentations while
> running different software on the same machine.   Users tend to
> think that violates the principle of least astonishment and it
> makes the already-difficult problem of transmitting a URI or IRI
> containing IDNs in arbitrary scripts to others and having them
> be interpreted accurately even more difficult.   So I think we
> need to be extremely careful to understand that there are
> tradeoffs and that "let's push it upward rather than addressing
> it here" has associated costs and risks.

Fair enough - point noted.

> This combination of things has led several of us to conclude
> that any restrictions or provisions that are sensible and can be
> incorporated in the protocol should be there, rather than in
> upper layers that will inevitably exhibit varying and
> inconsistent behavior.  Of course, the devil is in figuring out
> what is sensible and appropriate.

I agree entirely; I will be less cavalier in future about just 
suggesting we push the problem upwards :-)

Gerv