I agree with Paul on this specific issue.<br>
<br>
The problem is with existing references _in Unicode_ (IRI or otherwise) that may contain eszett. They work today, albeit as a side effect of IDNA2003.<br><br>What's problematic is embedded hyperlinks in web pages over which the domain owner has no control. I'm talking about: <a href="<a href="http://strasse.ca">http://straße.ca</a>"><a href="http://strasse.ca">straße.ca</a></a><br>
<br>One might argue that these references are not officially sanctioned, but the fact remains that we will be breaking these references. That seems to fall under "breaking dns stability". <br><br>I'm not sure if the registries who planned to deal with this really understand the implications. It's like DNS suddenly became case sensitive, but on a miniature (though perhaps negligible) scale.<br>
<br>Zone files are of no use here, because there is no way for a registry to tell if the name with "ss" was really meant to be a mapped-out eszett. How is the registry going to bundle? That seems like a major nightmare to me, but I agree that that should be discussed elsewhere.<br>
<br>To determine the magnitude of problem this might cause, we probably need search engine crawler data.<br><br>In order to keep the mapping out of the protocol, I can see this coming:<br>1. Software, even after upgrading to IDNA2008, will continue to map eszett to "ss"<br>
2. Registries will never allow registration of eszett, because it won't work (see #1)<br><br>We wouldn't want a browser maintained "should_map_eszett_for_this_tld" list either.<br><br>Is that any better than keeping it DISALLOWED?<br>
<br>=wil<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Cary Karp <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ck@nic.museum">ck@nic.museum</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">> My specific concern here is when it is forced on registries based on<br>
> bits-on-the-wire changes that we are proposing. Changing Those Two<br>
> Characters to be PVALID either forces a change in registry operations<br>
> and registrant operations, or it causes unpredictable and unexpected<br>
> results for users of IDNA2003.<br>
<br>
</div>The Esszett currently maps out of the IDN space, entirely, and there<br>
are no domain names that include them. If the Esszett becomes<br>
available for inclusion in domain names, any registry that opts to<br>
support it will be in precisely the same situation as, for example,<br>
the .SE registry was when it added support for the Swedish å ä ö. It<br>
had previously required that these be remapped to undecorated<br>
characters prior to registration, and needed to decide how to deal<br>
with the holders of remapped names who would have preferred to<br>
register the localized forms if that had previously been permitted.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
/Cary<br>
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