Additional thoughts on TRANSITIONAL

"Martin J. Dürst" duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp
Mon Dec 7 12:00:10 CET 2009


Hello Erik,

On 2009/12/05 5:21, Erik van der Poel wrote:
> If the current drafts of IDNAbis and TR46 were published as RFCs and a
> UTS, respectively, which would MSIE implement? They treat the infamous
> 4 characters differently.
>
> (Maybe I'm pushing too hard and should stay out of this conflict
> between IETF and Unicode. Maybe I should go back to
> reverse-engineering the browsers and see what actually happens in the
> real world. I am very, very tired of this WG process.)

I think that's because you are asking the wrong questions. The question 
isn't which spec MSIE (or any other browser) would implement, the 
question is to find a spec that hopefully everybody will implement. My 
current guess (and hope!) is that this will be something between the two 
specs you are suggesting.

Regards,    Martin.

> Erik
>
> On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Shawn Steele
> <Shawn.Steele at microsoft.com>  wrote:
>> ??? 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.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Idna-update mailing list
>>>> Idna-update at alvestrand.no
>>>> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/idna-update
>>>>
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-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp


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