Add IDN support to existing net APIs

[Michael McMahon]

On 26/03/14 08:43, Alan Bateman wrote:
> On 26/03/2014 02:58, Jonathan Lu wrote:
>> :
>>
>> Only for the system property to configure the use of IDNs and some 
>> related code to do the checking and conversion, no plan to add new 
>> methods to InetAddress.
>>
> Thanks, I'm just wondering whether it would make sense to add APIs. 
> Michael - do you have any views on this?
>
> -Alan

I think perhaps a net property (as opposed to a system property) would 
be sufficient. An explicit API would
probably need to be at a similar (global) scope. In other words, you 
would want all uses of Strings as hostnames
to be converted to/from IDNs transparently and without needing 
additional API invocations.
So, may be a property is just simpler. I assume the default initially 
would be for the property to be
disabled by default?

I know I raised the idea of filing a JEP for this, but maybe that's not 
necessary. If you are interested
to do this work Jonathan, then I'd suggest maybe doing a survey first, 
to identify the relevant specifications (eg RFCs)
that need to be complied with and then identify the places that we need 
to make changes (or a webrev
of the changes if you like). And we could take it from there.

Michael.