Re: Using Punicode for host names in IRI -> URI translation

On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Shawn Steele
<Shawn.Steele@microsoft.com> wrote:
> I'm still not sure that requiring punicode for URIs is helpful.
> [...]
> So saying "you MUST" do .... when converting an IRI to a URI doesn't
> seem very helpful to me.  If IDN use doesn't currently do that already
> I don't think people are going to change the system, risking
> instability, to fix (or maybe break) a downgrade scenario for
> compatibility in older software.

One scenario where an IRI is converted to a URI that contains a host
name is when a browser is using an HTTP proxy. (When there is no
proxy, the browser sends a relative URI in the GET request and puts
the host name in the Host header.)

So I tried IE8 with an HTTP proxy, and it turns out that it converts
the host name to Punycode. Do you think IE9 should send the host name
in UTF-8 when using a proxy? What if the proxy is old, and doesn't
know how to convert from UTF-8 to Punycode?

Erik

Received on Sunday, 22 November 2009 04:25:30 UTC