idna-bis and Eszett

Marcos Sanz/Denic sanz at denic.de
Wed Nov 28 14:33:37 CET 2007


John,

> (4) The larger registry operators who are handling IDNs are
> increasingly refusing to accept registrations in raw form,
> permitting only the ACE form or ToUnicode(ToASCII(string)) to be
> registered.

It would be interesting to know which are those operators you are talking 
about. As a matter of fact, DENIC's registration interface accepts only 
Nameprep(domain-name). But FWIW I've already seen advertisements with an 
eszett in the domain name; too bad I didn't have my camera with me.

I want to be humble, though: The policy of a registry is only a small 
piece in the puzzle, since we only have control of registrable second 
level domain labels. As I wrote to this list back in December last year: 
'Gentlemen, if the work of this group would render invalid some existing 
IDN (never mind if "parked" or "functioning" or at second or eighth 
level), I think it's in scope to determine a mechanim for 
support/migration of those.' (by "existing" I meant "existing out there" 
and not only "existing in my repository".)

Incidentally, your answer back then was:

"The purpose of IDNs is in use and usability, not in what can be 
registered, or has been registered, or that might be registered."

So according to yourself, this point 4) is irrelevant.

> (7) It appears that the standard orthographic rules about
> whether it is appropriate or desirable to replace Eszett with
> "ss" vary among German-speaking countries, so there is less
> guidance from common practice than might appear at first glance.

And I personally think this is completely orthogonal to the issue at 
stake.

Best regards,
Marcos


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