Q1 is mapping on lookup permanent or transitional?

Patrik Fältström patrik at frobbit.se
Wed Apr 8 22:30:51 CEST 2009


On 31 mar 2009, at 18.05, Vint Cerf wrote:

> Q1: Should the proposed mapping on lookup in a revised IDNA2008
> protocol specification be a permanent feature of the protocol or
> should it have a finite lifetime? Should it be required or optional?

It should be optional from day 1.

The reason for this is that it can NOT be mandatory in _every_  
application to do the mapping. It would for example be perfectly  
reasonable to have a zone management system (provisioning system) for  
DNS zone files that do ONLY handle A-labels and U-labels. This is one  
example of just one place where I have seen problems with IDNA2003.  
Simply because people have not understood what codepoints are "valid".  
Other examples include domain names in protocols like epp, smtp etc.

But it can not be a MUST.

And that way, it is completely up to the market to decide whether this  
mapping will stay for long, or just die (or never be implemented).

Another reason why I think we should allow "innovation" is that we do  
not specify input mechanisms, keyboard layouts, speech recognition  
mechanisms or hand writing recognition.

Yes, I am exaggerating quite a bit, but I wanted to so you understand  
where my mindset is.

So, define a mapping, let people implement it if they want. But base  
protocols on A-labels and U-labels in the future.

     Patrik

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