WG Review: Internationalized Domain Names in
Applications (Revised) (idnabis)
Eric Brunner-Williams
ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net
Tue Apr 8 22:36:23 CEST 2008
All,
Reading the opening paragraphs of the proposed WG's charter I have the
impression that the intent is to remove version dependency from a
versioned external reference, while maintaining the dependency upon the
external reference.
I also understand, perhaps incorrectly, that while the prior WG
eventually adopted the external reference, and a process of exclusion of
entries clearly suited to the original purpose of the authors of that
reference, and unsuited to the problem domain of character manipulation
the proposed process is inclusive, motivated by an observation of the IAB.
Turning to the "additional goals" section, I am puzzled by the inclusion
of provisioning (the processes (note the plural) by which some possibly
proper subsets of the universe of all possible strings are produced as
entries in zone files (or their functional equivalents)), in particular,
some temporal and presentation associations of production rules on
string sets, and publication (resolution and (mercifully obsoleted)
whois) of fully produced strings. I'd no idea that the requirements for
production were specific to either provisioning or publication.
Granted, its listed as an "additional goal", but the necessity,
sufficiency, or utility is absent, or I lack the necessary information
to understand the case for "separate requirements".
I'm very skeptical about the utility of an activity called a working
group (in the usual IETF senses of the term and process) and "...
providing extended public review of the output of a design team that has
been working on improvement of the IDNA specifications."
From my perspective, which I expect is shared by no one else, the core
choices of the original WG -- adopting a single external reference,
solving for "in-applications", the inability resolve the problem of
equivalencies between character sets via intermediate tables, implying a
role in originating, or maintaining, a character repertoire, arose from
a variety of assumptions, each believed by the majority to be valid at
the time, but each severally, and in aggregate, with significant
unresolved complications.
I've no idea what "IETF visibility" is intended to convey, but I hope it
means that implementors of the resulting text(s), that is, registry
operators and their system suppliers who implement two or more
independent implementations of the IETF's work product in this area,
have been the primary authors of the proposed WG's charter and initial
drafts.
I don't mind that the IETF continues in the direction it chose in 2003,
and the WGLC and LC dates are reasonable if the design team got it right
the first time, however, if alternative scenario does come to pass, they
are not.
Eric
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