Draft on IDN Tables in XML

[Shawn Steele]

IMO IDN can be implemented as it is.  There are the problems around multiple variations of names (not just eszett/ss, but also o-umlaut/oe, etc), but I see that as something to be solved on the DNS side.  Also I'd like to see DNS handle UTF-8 to lessen some of the challenges around punycode, but that's about it. 

There are interesting management problems and decisions for zone admins to address, and presumably tools that they want to help, but that's pretty restricted to each zone.

For the proposed XML structure, I don't see it being useful on the client side.  I'm also uncertain how interesting it is on the registrar side.  Either a TLD sells me the name I want, or they don't.  Once I have my name, I can manage my zone as I'd like, so these rules only apply to each administrator.  The cases when I need to share this information with others seems rare-ish to me, but I'm not someone who deals with this normally.  I need to explain to a registrant why I won't register their preferred domain, or the names that are bundled with it, but I think that's best handled in a human language, not a XML file of rules.

-Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: Gervase Markham [mailto:gerv at mozilla.org] 
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 9:17 AM
To: J-F C. Morfin
Cc: Shawn Steele; Kim Davies; vip at icann.org; James Mitchell; idna-update at alvestrand.no
Subject: Re: Draft on IDN Tables in XML

On 12/03/12 03:07, J-F C. Morfin wrote:
> At 03:13 12/03/2012, Shawn Steele wrote:
>> What kinds of applications are expected to consume this data? What's 
>> the target?
>
> The browsers want to use them. To validate the IDNs. This is why we 
> need to get them synced.

Shawn, representing Microsoft, asked this question, which I presume suggests that Microsoft isn't sure what this data is for. I, representing Mozilla, echo his question.

Which browser makers have asked for this data?

Gerv