Stability of valid IDN labels

[Mark Davis]

I got the following response from our web meister. As to IDN requirements
being based solely on ICANN -- I'd firmly disagree, and I suspect others
would as well. ICANN is certainly relevant and important for IDN, but not
the only stakeholder, by far.

===

> The Unicode list is not really public, e.g., it was removed
> from Gmane.org later, and it is not indexed by search engines.

All incorrect. The mail list is public, and it is indexed by search engines.
... Try it:
http://www.unicode.org/search/ and type "ken whistler mail list" into the
Google Search box. You'll get 2,720 hits on Unicode.org.

As for Gmane.org: the list was removed from Gmane.org (not the only
aggregator in the known universe, by the way) but a few days later Gmane.org
were sent a *complete* archive of the list to do with as they please, and
given explicit permission to archive it publicly. If they don't archive it,
it's not our fault.

> Disallow: /cgi-bin/ in <http://www.unicode.org/robots.txt>
> is about the Web interface to the Unicode list archive among
> other things.

Huh? There isn't any web interface to the Unicode list. It's just a bunch of
static HTML files.

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Eric Brunner-Williams <
ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net> wrote:

> Mark,
>
> Of course the first thing I did was google for "+unicode +u+1E9F", and
> observed that it is upper-case, and therefore, in itself, of little inate
> relevance to the DNS, where the broad rule is "case fold where case exists".
>
> It is however, an instance of requirements agency that is outside of the
> scope of this WG, assuming that this WG's requirements originate from the
> institutions I mentioned yesterday -- broadly -- ICANN and little else,
> except perhaps some DNS registry operators as an additional set of authors.
>
> I'm glad you're going to get a site administrator to look into the final
> issue Frank identified, as there is a historic issue with using texts which
> are only conditionally available. Its been ages since I last spent time on
> IETF process, but I'm sure someone on this list has the current cite.
>
> Eric
>
>
> Mark Davis wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Frank Ellermann <
> > hmdmhdfmhdjmzdtjmzdtzktdkztdjz at gmail.com <mailto:
> > hmdmhdfmhdjmzdtjmzdtzktdkztdjz at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >    John C Klensin wrote:
> >
> >    > To say this a little differently, such changes in Unicode are
> >    > not made in secret, but involve opportunities for public
> >    > discussion.  It is reasonable to assume that the negative
> >    > effects on IDNs of making such changes would be part of the
> >    > relevant discussions.
> >
> >    I'm far from sure how reasonable that is:  The introduction of
> >    u+1E9E was discussed in public, but decided by a third party
> >    not interested in its effects on the Internet, let alone IDN.
> >
> >
> > For those who (perhaps unlike Frank) have not memorized the code points
> > of all characters, this is the *CAPITAL SHARP S.*
> >
> > While of course Unicode can't be limited to just characters that work in
> > IDN, this particular change -- and the ramifications for security and
> > compatibility -- it was discussed at great length over the course of many
> > meetings. It was encoded largely at the request of the German national body.
> >
> > Moreover, there is little issue that the form occurs in documents, nor
> > that it is not the preferred capitalization.
> >
> >    The Unicode list is not really public, e.g., it was removed
> >    from Gmane.org later, and it is not indexed by search engines.
> >    This is neither relevant nor public for practical purposes:
> >
> >
> > I'll ask our administrator, but you can certainly search for material
> > that is in the Unicode archives. Try:
> >
> > http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aunicode.org+%22capital+sharp+s%22
> >
> >
> >
> >    Disallow: /cgi-bin/ in <http://www.unicode.org/robots.txt>
> >    is about the Web interface to the Unicode list archive among
> >    other things.
> >
> >     Frank
> >    _______________________________________________
> >    Idna-update mailing list
> >    Idna-update at alvestrand.no <mailto:Idna-update at alvestrand.no>
> >    http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/idna-update
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Mark
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Idna-update mailing list
> > Idna-update at alvestrand.no
> > http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/idna-update
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Idna-update mailing list
> Idna-update at alvestrand.no
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/idna-update
>



-- 
Mark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/idna-update/attachments/20080422/21462a22/attachment-0001.html