WG Review: Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (Revised) (idnabis)

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

Continuing ...

Harald,

In my prior note I mentioned one lesson I learned was that character 
tables presented a problem for the I*TF set of fora.

The more important lesson I learned was that subject matter expertise 
really wasn't optional. A problem with a particular source of a set of 
things which may be viewed as containing some subset of characters, 
arose from a subject matter expertise that was present in the creation 
of other sets of characters, but absent in the creation of the source 
selected by the first IDN WG. This was the root cause for a TC <-> SC 
equivalency issue, which the tsconv draft attempted to resolve.

As I mentioned at the begining of this minor exchange of notes, I don't 
suppose for a moment that the tsconv experience must be repeated, but I 
don't know that the assumptions that lead up to it have been critically 
examined and any issues identified and resolved.

I don't know that the named authors and contributors to this IDNA WG's 
initial set of drafts don't have the collective clue to meet the 
technical requirements the authors of the tsconv draft felt were unmet 
by the authors of the prior drafts, eventually the 
mandatory-to-implement standards-track RFCs derived from Verisign's ACE, 
but I haven't yet noted the contribution of those engineers in the 
archives. Perhaps this is just oversight or carelessness on my part.

For my own part I'll ask. Naturally I hope to learn I'm mistaken.

Eric

Harald Alvestrand wrote:
> Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:
>> Vint Cerf wrote:
>>> The "public" reference is in some sense both a combination of more 
>>> IETF involvement beyond the design team that has developed the IDs 
>>> upon which it is expected the working group effort will be based and 
>>> the general public to the extent that "last call" might engage 
>>> parties in addition to the usual IETF participants. Please do note 
>>> however that the design team believes it has consulted selectively 
>>> among IETF and linguistic experts in the course of refining its 
>>> proposal. It wishes to validate its work with a wider community.
>>
>> Vint,
>>
>> When we consider how IETF Working Groups, or the IETF as a body 
>> function functions, that is, when we consider what "the usual IETF 
>> participants" bring to truly difficult issues, the outcome of the 
>> tsconv draft may be illuminating to others. I know it was an 
>> illuminating experience to myself, and to the named authors.
>>
>> I don't suppose for a moment that the tsconv experience must be 
>> repeated, but I don't know that the assumptions that lead up to it 
>> have been critically examined and any issues identified and resolved. 
> Eric,
>
> would you care to be a little bit more explicit?
>
> hta at hta-warp:~$ ls internet-drafts/*tsconv*
> ls: internet-drafts/*tsconv*: No such file or directory
>
> so I guess you mean:
>
> Internet Draft                                 Authors: XiaoDong LEE
> <draft-ietf-idn-tsconv-02.txt>                          HSU NAI-WEN
> Nov 16th, 2001                                          Deng Xiang
> Expires in six months                                   Erin Chen
>                                                        Zhang Hong
>                                                        Sun Guonian
>
>
> But what lessons did you draw from it?
>
>                  Harald
>
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