A-label definition (was: IDN test TLDs)

Stephane Bortzmeyer bortzmeyer at nic.fr
Fri Jun 27 18:00:51 CEST 2008


On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 05:02:37PM -0700,
 Kenneth Whistler <kenw at sybase.com> wrote 
 a message of 50 lines which said:

> draft-ietf-idnabis-rationale-00.txt states that:
> 
>   * A "U-label" is an IDNA-valid string of Unicode characters,
>     expressed in a standard Unicode Encoding Form, normally
>     UTF-8 in an Internet transmission context...

Frankly, I do not see why we even need to specify an Unicode Encoding
Form here, since it has no use in the protocol. Punycode is necessary
for interoperability but Unicode labels can be exchanged in whatever
format people wish, since they do not appear on the wire with IDNA.

I would therefore suggest a more abstract definition:

* A "U-label" is an IDNA-valid string of Unicode characters,



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