Additional thoughts on TRANSITIONAL

[Shawn Steele]

??? I wasn't suggesting that IE would avoid the standard.  I'm saying it will take a while.  FF, Safari, Chrome & Opera don't patch previous versions, they expect users to install the latest & greatest versions.  IE does too, but you can see from the adoption rates that it's difficult to get everyone moved very quickly.

In particular I very much advocate standards, so I'm a bit surprised by your remark.  Just to be clear:  None of my positions have been just because that's what I think is "easy" for IE.  I am well-known within the company for arguing what's right for the end-user, regardless of how difficult it is on our existing code base.

I can't patch IDN and get it to all our customers in a month or two, it's just not possible.

-Shawn

________________________________________
From: Erik van der Poel [erikv at google.com]
Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 11:48 AM
To: Shawn Steele
Cc: Andrew Sullivan; Gervase Markham; idna-update at alvestrand.no
Subject: Re: Additional thoughts on TRANSITIONAL

In the past, we have seen browsers like Firefox, Safari, Chrome and
Opera implement various specs rather than trying to be 100% compatible
with MSIE. I wonder if this (IDNAbis) is one of those occasions where
Firefox will stick to the "official" spec (IETF), hoping to eventually
drag MSIE, kicking and screaming, into the "modern age"? Gerv?
Anybody?

Erik

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Shawn Steele
<Shawn.Steele at microsoft.com> wrote:
> Just sent, but I think transitional that breaks current IDNA2003 sites that work is really bad.  I also think anything that builds-in a delay of 5-10 years to get correct language support is also really bad.
>
> -Shawn
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Erik van der Poel [erikv at google.com]
> Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 11:11 AM
> To: Andrew Sullivan; Shawn Steele; Gervase Markham
> Cc: idna-update at alvestrand.no
> Subject: Re: Additional thoughts on TRANSITIONAL
>
> Yes, I'm hoping that we are willing to explore different ways out of
> this mess. We currently have two different proposals for IDNA:
>
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/wg/idnabis/
> http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/
>
> In particular, I'd like to hear from Microsoft and Firefox folks, on
> their thoughts regarding the TRANSITIONAL ideas.
>
> Erik
>
> On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs at shinkuro.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 09:16:02AM -0800, Erik van der Poel wrote:
>>> some point in the future, when there is consensus that it is the right
>>> time (and the right thing to do).
>>
>> Perhaps I'm am growing cynical with age, but given the difficulty of
>> converging now, I have doubts about the chances of converging in the
>> future, when there is even more deployed stuff depending on existing
>> behaviour.  Still, it might work, and I'm by no means saying no.  Any
>> route out of this twisty little maze of arguments, all repeated, is
>> one I'm willing to explore.
>>
>> A
>>
>> --
>> Andrew Sullivan
>> ajs at shinkuro.com
>> Shinkuro, Inc.
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