IDNs in the root

Harald Tveit Alvestrand harald at alvestrand.no
Fri Jan 23 05:37:02 CET 2009


Paul Hoffman skrev:
> At 4:55 AM +0100 1/23/09, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>   
>> For one thing, that makes "IDNAv2" likely to be finished well after IDNs have been introduced in the root.
>>     
>
> Serious question: why is this at all relevant? Is there any IDNs that are meant to be entered in the root that will have a different encoding under IDNA2003 than under IDNA2008 or contain characters that make them unrenderable in IDNA2003?
>
>   
There are many strings for which registration could be requested under 
IDNA2003 that cannot be registered under IDNA2008 (the symbols being the 
most prominent example). ICANN is aghast at the idea of having to allow 
something to be registered in the root and then having to take it out 
when the rules change.

I haven't seen anyone claiming that they want to register a TLD in 
Dhivehi or Yiddish (the two BIDI cases where it matters that 2003 is 
more restrictive than 2008). But there are people arguing for 
registration of a TLD with a ZWNJ in it.

With the relatively restrictive rules that ICANN has put in place, it's 
not likely that any problems will be caused - but one reason for ICANN 
having to specify the restrictive rules in full rather than saying 
"stuff legal under 2008 is OK" and adding some short list of 
restrictions is that 2008 is not finished.

In my ICANN role, I want to have stable rules that I can reference, and 
the never-ending IDNA wrangling gives the impression of instability, 
even though the actual changes we're discussing in allowed strings at 
this stage of 2008's development range from small to microscopic.
("IDNAv2" is another matter. It means we have to do it all over again.)

                        Harald


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