Secondly, such solution deployed outside a testbed/trials would only hinder us from moving to a UTF-8 or other binary solution in future.
It depends. It wouldn't hinder "us" from moving to UTF-8; it appears that the .nu installation supports UTF-8 *today*. It is fairly easy
to recognize UTF-8: If it looks like UTF-8, it probably is. So allowing UTF-8 in DNS queries would not break their installation. Furthermore,
it would then still be possible to decide that certain non-conforming
installations will be broken by extension of the standard.
Regardless, I do believe that it is the clear intention of the .nu operators to phase out their proprietary extensions once all relevant clients have been updated to support IDNA.
Regards, Martin
