Re: Problems of Internationalized Mail Address eXtensions (IMAX)

The long-term cost argument is very well put below.

Regards,   Martin.

At 05:12 03/02/27 +0000, D. J. Bernstein wrote:

>Dan Kohn writes:

> > it's a huge amount of implementation work for no meaningful gain (since
> > IDNA code paths will still have to be supported forever)
>
>If IDNA were a complete solution, if the massive costs of implementing
>and deploying that solution had already been incurred, and if Internet
>software development came to a complete halt so that we didn't have to
>worry about costs imposed on future implementors, then I'd agree.
>
>But IDNA isn't a complete solution; only a tiny fraction of the IDNA
>costs have been incurred; and, most importantly, Internet development
>shows no signs of coming to a halt.
>
>All the short-term upgrade costs that we're considering, no matter how
>huge they might seem, are tiny compared to the long-term costs of the
>character-set mess. Do you want implementors in ten years, or twenty
>years, or fifty years, to be continuing to worry about conversions from
>one character encoding to another? I want them to be spending the same
>time providing _new_ features for the users.
>
>---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
>Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago