Brief Plans for IDNAbis WG meeting at SF IETF

Vint Cerf vint at google.com
Sat Mar 14 20:53:03 CET 2009


yes, I should have said that I will try to produce such summaries  
ahead of time for consideration by the WG.

v


Vint Cerf
Google
1818 Library Street, Suite 400
Reston, VA 20190
202-370-5637
vint at google.com




On Mar 14, 2009, at 3:47 PM, Erik van der Poel wrote:

> Vint,
>
> Given the nature of the IETF meeting format (lining up at the
> microphone) and the possibility that we might end up spending a lot of
> time on Agenda Item 1 below, may I suggest that since many of us
> already know of basic implications for backward compatibility, that we
> reiterate those with short explanations between now and the meeting,
> and that you (possibly with the help of an assistant) collect and
> summarize those statements before the meeting?
>
> Similarly, the implications of Paul's approach can also be suggested
> by mailing list participants, and those can also be collected and
> summarized.
>
> Of course, the intention would be to have meeting attendees read those
> summaries before attending, so that we can avoid spending too much
> time on mere statements and explanations of the summarized items.
>
> I believe your next two steps (after Agenda Items 1 and 2), i.e.
> whether or not to publish IDNA2008 and whether or not IDNA2008 and
> IDNAv2 can somehow be combined, are much more interesting and useful.
> There may be a way to "generate" tables similar to IDNA2003's from
> future versions of Unicode, without adding a new prefix each time. I
> may have more to say on this later.
>
> Erik
>
> On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:
>> We will meet on Monday and Tuesday, March 23/24.
>>
>> I would like to suggest that we attempt to come to some closure the
>> work in the following way:
>>
>> 1. Assuming the charter as it is stated, we try to agree on what the
>> system (IDNA2008) looks like. In particular, assuming that mapping is
>> NOT part of the protocol. I would want also to try to agree on the
>> basic implications for backward (in)compatibility with the existing
>> IDNA2003 behavior. This effort is not necessarily a decision-making
>> one but rather an attempt to agree on the implications of a charter-
>> consistent design. I would emphasize here that an important component
>> of the charter was to try to accommodate changes to UNICODE by
>> algorithmic means (tables, bidi rules, etc) and not have to convene
>> IETF WGs to agree on any implied changes to the tables
>>
>> 2. Consider the proposal by Paul Hoffman to implement an extension of
>> IDNA2003 by direct additions or changes to tables of valid characters
>> or mappings of characters. Again we would want to try to agree on the
>> implications of this approach.
>>
>> If we can get this far, I would suggest two further steps. Within the
>> current charter, I would seek to publish the IDNA2008 as the product
>> of the WG. However, I would also raise the basic question, which of
>> the two approaches appears to be most beneficial in terms of
>> implementation in the short term and maintenance in the longer  
>> term. I
>> would guess that there are different views on these points and  
>> perhaps
>> other or better metrics by which to judge the alternatives. There may
>> be intermediate alternatives that somehow combine the rule-based
>> IDNA2008 approach with mapping or other tactics that increase the
>> backward compatibility of the proposed and current practices.
>>
>> Your thoughts on this approach would be appreciated.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Vint Cerf
>> Google
>> 1818 Library Street, Suite 400
>> Reston, VA 20190
>> 202-370-5637
>> vint at google.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Idna-update mailing list
>> Idna-update at alvestrand.no
>> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/idna-update
>>



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