Mapping (was: Issues lists and the "preprocessing" topic)

Vint Cerf vint at google.com
Sat Aug 23 01:25:51 CEST 2008


so a key issue here is what constitutes normative material and what  
is explanatory. John asked for specific proposals on that point in  
Dublin and I am sure would appreciate similarly pointed inputs now.

vint


On Aug 22, 2008, at 6:44 PM, Mark Davis wrote:

> In Dublin, we unfortunately never got to a main issue, which was  
> the document structure. What I think we need to do is move all  
> normative material from rationale to protocol, and then:
> In the protocol document in an appendix have a listing of the  
> differences with IDNA2003, with examples of each kind of difference  
> for clarity.
> In the rationale document have some explanation of why the  
> differences exist.
> Mark
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 3:18 PM, John C Klensin <klensin at jck.com>  
> wrote:
>
>
> --On Wednesday, 20 August, 2008 09:55 -0700 Erik van der Poel
> <erikv at google.com> wrote:
>
> > The current IDNA spec is IDNA2003, and it includes the default
> > pre-processing steps. Now, IDNA200X is removing (the details
> > of) the pre-processing steps, so it ought to explain this
> > major difference between IDNA2003 and 200X. This explanation
> > can mention the difference between the "default"
> > pre-processing (as seen in IDNA2003 and HTML today) and the
> > per-locale UI pre-processing such as Turkish dotted/dotless
> > uppercase 'i'. If the WG consensus is to leave out any mention
> > of UI pre-processing, that is fine, but I think it is quite
> > important that IDNA200X explain that the default
> > pre-processing of IDNA2003 has been removed.
>
> I agree and you didn't even need to twist my arm.
>
> But I have a problem on which I need advice (and, ideally,
> specific text or instructions) from the WG.   It appears to me
> that there are three ways to address the differences between
> IDNA2003 and IDNA2008, of which this one and the exclusion of
> non-letter/ non-digit characters may be the ones with the
> largest impact.
>
>        (1) We explain what IDNA2008 does and ignore IDNA2003
>        and the differences entirely.
>
>        (2) We explain what IDNA2008 does and note that it is
>        different but don't explain why.
>
>        (3) We explain the issues with mapping and why we
>        decided to go from a "map whenever possible so as to
>        include most Unicode characters somehow" logic to a
>        "don't map so as to make behavior more understandable
>        and U-labels and A-labels convertible to each other
>        without information loss" logic.
>
> Rationale and its predecessors started with (3).  I was told to
> tear out the text that seemed critical of IDNA2003, with one key
> comment being that type of justification may have been important
> in getting where we are but that it is no longer important now
> that the WG is chartered, etc.   So we are now roughly at (2)
> with some of the WG membership still believing that we should be
> at (1), i.e., with all explanatory material discarded.
>
> I'm happy to go back toward (3) --especially since I've never
> been convinced that removing those explanations was wise-- but I
> have two problems.  I don't know how to say "this is different
> from IDNA2003 because..." without saying things about the
> IDNA2003 strategy that some will construe as critical and
> negative.  Others might be able to do better.   Or it is
> possible that what we really need to do is to strengthen (2)
> without making a "why this is different" comparison.   I've
> already done a bit of the latter and hope that I can finish up
> the pending drafts and get them posted this weekend (this last
> week or so have been terrors for reasons unrelated to IDNA).
> But I don't know if the new text will be adequate; if it is not,
> I would really appreciate specific suggestions.
>
> And, at some stage, I think we need Vint to see if he can state
> a formal consensus call on whether we want "why this is
> different" explanations even if those explanations could be
> interpreted as critical of IDNA2003.
>
>    john
>
>
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