Comment display vs. transmission vs. storage (Score 1) 471
I didn't see another comment that made the distinction, so:
Don't confuse display, transmission, and storage encoding. It was a convenience when 7-bit ASCII characters could be used for all three (seemingly). But it was never really true. The encoding on disk was never really the same as the transmission encoding or the display encoding. When you display an ASCII 'A', you don't see '0100 0001'. End users want to see and type in a pretty URL. If it's transmitted or stored as an unreadable hexadecimal hash, who cares? It's like complaining that the magnetic domains on the hard disk that represent the letter 'o' don't form a circle.
If I wanted a logo domain name, I could register an encoding of the SVG as my domain name, then write and contribute the code for firefox to decode and display my logo domain name. I wouldn't need to lobby ICANN to allow SVG or bitmapped domain names (although I might have to write an RFC for the IETF :-) )
Actually, since DNS names and IP addresses aren't trustworthy on a massive global scale anyway, we should be using public keys to identify hosts, websites, and other Internet entities. But that's a topic for another discussion.
Don't confuse display, transmission, and storage encoding. It was a convenience when 7-bit ASCII characters could be used for all three (seemingly). But it was never really true. The encoding on disk was never really the same as the transmission encoding or the display encoding. When you display an ASCII 'A', you don't see '0100 0001'. End users want to see and type in a pretty URL. If it's transmitted or stored as an unreadable hexadecimal hash, who cares? It's like complaining that the magnetic domains on the hard disk that represent the letter 'o' don't form a circle.
If I wanted a logo domain name, I could register an encoding of the SVG as my domain name, then write and contribute the code for firefox to decode and display my logo domain name. I wouldn't need to lobby ICANN to allow SVG or bitmapped domain names (although I might have to write an RFC for the IETF
Actually, since DNS names and IP addresses aren't trustworthy on a massive global scale anyway, we should be using public keys to identify hosts, websites, and other Internet entities. But that's a topic for another discussion.
