[spec] IRIs, IDNs, and all that international jazz

[bie]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 04:13:06PM +0100, Solderpunk wrote:
> It's true that this would be a breaking change, although of a different
> kind from other breaking changes I've pushed back against in the past.
> It's not as if Geminispace would suddenly become impossible to access,
> or would split into two totally incompatible subspaces based on the
> old and new protocol versions.  Any currently extant Gemini document
> which included ASCII-only links would remain perfectly accessible
> by old and new clients alike.  So, it's a relatively soft break.
> Given the importance of first-class internationalisation support,
> it might be worthwhile.

It's only a soft break if you don't consider the query string.

Even if all the names on my server are ASCII only, a change to IRIs
means I'll be forced to update my server to remain compatible since I
have dynamic scripts that accept content through the query string.

Solution 3 is a "hard no" for me - the increased complexity is not
something I'm willing to take on, and I'll most likely just end up
shutting down my servers.

bie