I-D Action: draft-klensin-idna-rfc5891bis-00.txt

Paul Hoffman phoffman at imc.org
Sat Mar 11 21:10:36 CET 2017


On 11 Mar 2017, at 8:52, John C Klensin wrote:

> Asmus Freytag and I have started to put together a draft that
> addresses a problem with the IDNA2008 specs, specifically that
> we failed to make the responsibility of registries to define
> code point and label acceptability rules that were considerably
> more narrow (and better understood by them) than the full set of
> labels allowed by RFC 5891-5893.  It doesn't actually change
> anything because that requirement is in the existing specs; it
> just makes (or tries to make) the requirements painfully clear
> to those who have been missing or misreading them.
>
> It also provides an explicit link between IDNA2008 requirements
> and ICANN work on repertoires and label generation rules without
> endorsing that work as more than one thoughtful approach that
> might be examined for either reference or inspiration.
>
> Comments (obviously) welcome.

Can you explain why this document is meant to be on Standards Track? 
That is, if it is just a hopefully-better explanation of what is in RFC 
5891-5893, wouldn't it be informational? The abstract says "It does not 
alter the protocols and rules themselves in any way."

> For anyone who might wonder, this document avoids the more
> controversial IDNA2008 issues including:
> . . .

If you're going to open the box of updating the IDNA2008 standard, it 
feels like it should be really open. If you're really just trying to 
clarify one bit of it, great, but then consider making that just 
informational.

FWIW, I consider this to be far from trivial. If you mean to clarify 
this standard, the discussion should have a IETF mailing list associated 
with it, not done on a private mailing list that is barely alive. And if 
you mean to open the standard (even a little), it should be done in an 
IETF WG under IETF consensus rules. Yes, I remember how hard it was to 
get consensus the last time, but the result of that was the lack of 
clarity that you are trying to fix now.

--Paul Hoffman


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