UTC Response to "Letter to Unicode Technical Committee on IDNA2008"

[Lisa Moore]

Dear Vint,

The UTC appreciates the difficulty for users of IDNs, the registries,and 
all involved if lowercase sharp s (Latin Small Letter Sharp S (U+00DF)) 
and small final sigma (Greek Small Letter Final Sigma (U+03C2)), in 
particular, are mapped to other characters. As you know, our concerns are 
compatibility and potential security issues. However, based on the many 
ongoing dicussions and much thought, the UTC would not be opposed to have 
lowercase sharp s, final sigma, and even joiner and non-joiner be valid 
and not mapped, as long as there can be policies in place for a transition 
period (of say 5 years) that will manage the expected compatibility 
issues.

The key for us is having policies for a well-managed transition with 
sufficient time for browser and other application upgrades.  Without such 
policies in place, we would favor continuing the IDNA2003 treatment of the 
four above-mentioned characters. 

Best regards,

Lisa Moore
Chair, Unicode Technical Committee


Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote on 11/28/2009 01:57:17 PM:
 
>
> 
> A prompt response would be much appreciated considering we have 
> delayed reporting the results of the IETF LAST CALL to the Internet 
> Engineering Steering Group while this matter is debated.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Vinton Cerf
> Chairman, IDNABIS Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force