I-D Action:draft-faltstrom-5892bis-01.txt

Vint Cerf vint at google.com
Tue Dec 14 05:14:00 CET 2010


FWIW I agree strongly with john on this, especially preserving flexibility
in addressing  future releases of unicode.

----- Original Message -----
From: idna-update-bounces at alvestrand.no <idna-update-bounces at alvestrand.no>
To: idna-update at alvestrand.no <idna-update at alvestrand.no>
Sent: Mon Dec 13 23:05:57 2010
Subject: Re: I-D Action:draft-faltstrom-5892bis-01.txt



--On Monday, December 13, 2010 11:30 -0800
Internet-Drafts at ietf.org wrote:

> A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line
> Internet-Drafts directories.
>
> 	Title           : The Unicode code points and IDNA - Unicode
> 6.0 	Author(s)       : P. Faltstrom, P. Hoffman
> 	Filename        : draft-faltstrom-5892bis-01.txt
> 	Pages           : 4
> 	Date            : 2010-12-13
>...

I hope the comments that follow are complementary to Martin's,
not competitive with them.  I believe that they are editorial,
rather than substantive, but may be important.

(1) The organization of this document almost implies that the
three characters identified are the only changes from Unicode
5.2 to Unicode 6.0.  That is not the case.  A lot of new
characters have been added and, extrapolating from James's
comments, we should be doing at least a pro forma review as to
whether all of the others are associated with properties that
cause them to be appropriated classified for IDNA purposes.
That suggests to me that either:

	-- this draft needs a brief summary of the other changes
	made in 6.0, number of new characters added, etc.  That
	can be done in large measure with some anchoring text
	and a citation of a Unicode change summary, but it ought
	to be done.

	-- the abstract, introduction, and maybe even title need
	to be narrowed down to make it clear that the document
	addresses _only_ those characters that were defined in
	Unicode 5.2 or earlier and whose properties changed in
	6.0 in a way that effects IDNA.

I'm pretty agnostic about that choice right now (someone could
easily persuade me that one or the other was better), but I
think it has to be one or the other.

(2) I think that, if there is going to be a section titled "IETF
Consensus" that the reasoning for the conclusion should be
given, even if it is in abbreviated form.  This is an informed
decision, not the result of some voting process among the
ignorant.

(3) The statement in Section 2 that reads "The IETF will produce
a new RFC of this type for every change..." is quite significant
and a major step, reversing a decision to be deliberately vague
on this subject when 5890ff were written.   It also binds us to
a strategy that many had hoped would gradually evolve into an
IANA activity with some expert support as experience
accumulated.  It commits the IETF to producing a new RFC with
every version and sub-version of Unicode -- somewhat over one
per year if recent patterns continue and my arithmetic is
correct.  We have rarely made such commitments and, IMO, have
had difficulty consistently supporting them when we have.  I
recommend replacing it with a statement that this document is
being produced because 6.0 is the first version of Unicode to be
released since IDNA2008 was published and leaving the future
somewhat more open-ended.

   -john



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