Browser IDN display policy: opinions sought

[Gervase Markham]

On 09/12/11 16:46, Paul Hoffman wrote:
> Thank you for that explanation. So, "if your IDN domain works in one
> copy of Firefox, it works in them all", but that might change over
> time if a TLD changes its policies. But we know that many TLDs very
> much want to change their policies with respect to bundling.

Without disputing your assertion, I'd be very interested in more
information if you have it. Why do TLDs not like bundling?

> No; yes. :-) I think that if type A were not justified, there would
> have been many complaints about it over the years; I haven't heard
> any.

And you think that take-up and real-world use of IDNs on the consumer
Internet has been broad enough that we would have heard them?

>> If you would, in an ideal world, prefer everyone to be Type B,
>> would you be interested in a push to try and persuade other browser
>> makers to change tack instead of Firefox?
> 
> My ideal world is much closer to A than B. It is, in fact, one of the
> reasons that I switched to Chrome for my day-to-day work browsing
> that involves IDNs.

So do you add scripts for languages you don't speak to the Chrome
preferences to get the IDNs to render?

>> I wonder how we can get some statistics on that?
> 
> We can't. It is inherently impossible to measure because if some
> company wants to identify themselves with <somestring>.<theirtld> and
> that renders wrong in IE, they just won't register it.

But surely the point is that it may well render right in their IE, but
wrong in the IE of their customers (e.g. if their customers are using US
English Windows and IE)?

Gerv