Re: [ICANN-EU] IDN or: Are users Unicode-aware?

[Andreas Borchert <icanneu@andreas-borchert.de>]

On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 02:28:51PM +0200, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Sep 2000 18:55:53 +0200, you wrote:
> >This implies that domain names can't be used globally any more,
> >because they can't be typed or read globally (note that phone
> >numbers can).  That is, domain names become close to useless as
> >globally unique addresses which they, technically, still are.
> 
> I don't see a real problem in this. The only caveat is that,
> obviously, uniqueness in the domain name space has to be preserved, so
> that each couple (1 string, 1 codepage) - or even better, one Unicode
> string - identifies uniquely a DNS entry. Then, if someone will want
> to choose an URL that most people in the world can't type, it's their
> business - they possibly don't care about losing that target, and
> that's it.

It is not just a problem of typing an URL into a web browser.
DNS names are used in a large set of protocols including mail
transfer. Without extending the most important core of protocols
first the extension of DNS names to unicode characters does not
make sense.

In the long term I am convinced that unicode characters will
be everywhere including in DNS names -- if ICANN does not support
it in some future it will be done by somebody else.

Andreas.
http://www.andreas-borchert.de/