idna-bis and 'ß'

Thomas Roessler roessler at does-not-exist.org
Fri Jul 27 01:25:28 CEST 2007


In the current IDNA environment, the 'ß' character (latin small
letter sharp s) is mapped to the all-Latin string "ss".  Therefore,
no traces of that character can be found in zone files or
registration databases; however, references to domain names (even
all-ASCII ones) can be written in that fashion, and presented on
business cards, in printed material, and in IRIs.

I understand that the current state of idna-bis would lead to
treating 'ß' as a "usual" character, causing a different encoding of
relevant input strings.  Taking that step in idna-bis would cause
existing references written with the 'ß' character (and possibly
resolving to all-ASCII domain names) to break.

As a cure, the current mapping behavior should be preserved as an
exception.

Regards,
-- 
Thomas Roessler   <roessler at does-not-exist.org>


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