Updating RFC 5890-5893 (IDNA 2008) to Full Standard

[John C Klensin]

--On Thursday, November 15, 2012 18:22 -0800 Mark Davis ☕
<mark at macchiato.com> wrote:

> point taken:
> 
> concerns --> important concerns

Mark,

I don't want to drag this out, but even that change implies that
we dismissed the "backward compatibility" issues as unimportant.
That wasn't the case.  We (or at least some of us):

(i) Saw some nuances about what you call "backward
compatibility" and put less weight on some of the practices you
roll into that category than others.  Even those we did weight
higher were unimportant, they just didn't win out given other
considerations.

(ii) Saw other issues as important, indeed very important, but
not sufficiently important/ persuasive to overwhelm the other
considerations identified in my earlier note.

In addition, as indirectly mentioned earlier, some of us were
very concerned and skeptical about strategies that were
suggested as "temporarily maintain more backward compatibility"
or "provide better transition" unless there was a clear stopping
model.    I can't speak for others, but I would have supported a
strategy that would have reduced pain at the cost of a few years
of transition or slow adoption.  The situation that Anne
describes is exactly the one that I (we?) feared: getting
several years out with many systems unconverted and with no
obvious plans to convert.  If that occurred without the approval
of the Standard (but with arguments that they should "conform"
to UTR 46), it is plausible to be concerned that the benefits of
IDNA2008 would never be realized had the WG preserved the old
behaviors (either by adopting and mandating UTR 46 or otherwise).

best,
   john