The notion that use of languages other than English can or should be
'localized' strikes me as both shockingly arrogant and hopelessly naive.
People can and will use their own languages on the Internet - in email,
on the web, and in domain names, and without regard to their location
in either the physical world, the currently topology of the network,
or the TLD of the host they are using at the moment. Furthermore, a
great many people use multiple languages (not necessarily including
English) is, so that a given person, host, or subnetwork will often
need to exist in multiple (potentially competing) locales at once.
And while a great many people - who speak only a single langauge,
and whose travels are confined to a small geographic area where
others speak only that language - might indeed be happy with a
localized solution, adoption of purely localized solutions would
impair the vast number of people who do not fall into that category.
The question is not whether people will use non-ASCII characters in
domain names, but whether the various uses of non-ASCII characters
will coexist peacefully with each other and with existing applications,
and whether applications will continue to interoperate with one another.
So while it's quite important that IDNs be able to be represented
in ASCII for compatibility with existing applications and the large
number of protocols that use DNS names as protocol elements, and
even though we all understand that pure-ASCII, Romanized versions
of non-English names will continue to enjoy wide use -- we still need
to produce an IDN standard as soon as possible.
Fortunately the IDN group is making very good progress, and I'm
confident that consensus around a concrete proposal will soon emerge.
Keith