Implementation questions (digressing from...)

[Erik van der Poel]

On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 8:24 PM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs at shinkuro.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 06:03:29PM -0800, Erik van der Poel wrote:
>> The problem is that we don't have universal agreement to pull mappings
>> out of the middle of the protocol. I don't know what will happen at WG
>> Last Call, etc, but so far, I have not seen any indication from
>> browser developers that they are willing to drop the mappings
>> (lower-casing, etc) from HTML href processing (and address bar
>> processing).
>
> I think I don't understand you.  Do you mean (1) that browser
> developers might not be willing to give up the convenience of the
> *prep parts of IDNA2003 or (2) that browser developers have developed
> a set of heuristic mappings of their own as part of the actual
> deployment of IDNA2003?  If (1), then we have a serious problem with
> the charter of this WG, and we need to know as soon as possible.  If
> (2), then they're already acting consistently with the proposal we
> have so far, at least in principle (though probably not in the
> details).

I meant (1) but I don't know whether we have a problem with the
charter, which refers to "the protocol", which probably means
different things to different people.

As far as I'm concerned, HTML hrefs *do* "cross the wire" and they
*are* processed by machines (not humans), so we need rules. I think
those rules can be called a protocol. Whether this WG is chartered to
work on the protocol of HTML hrefs is another matter entirely. Most
would say "No". However, IDNA2008 probably will have some sort of
effect on the HTML spec. The details still need to be hammered out.

Erik