High-level changes from IDNA2003 in the "current work"

[Paul Hoffman]

Hi again. It would be useful for those coming in late to have a 
summary of what changes are embodied in the current set of documents. 
Here's my first take on such a list. If people like this format, it 
could be used as the beginning of an outline for the BoF/WG.

a) Update base character set from Unicode 3.2 to Unicode 5.0 or 5.1

b) Disallow most symbol characters

c) Remove the mapping and normalization steps from the protocol and 
have them instead done by the applications themselves, possibly in a 
local fashion, before invoking the protocol

d) Change the way that the protocol specifies which characters are 
allowed in labels from "humans decide what the table of codepoints 
contains" to "decision about codepoints are based on Unicode 
properties plus a small exclusion list created by humans"

e) Allowing typical words and names in languages such as Dhivehi and 
Yiddish to be expressed

f) Make bidirectional domain names (delimited strings of labels, not 
just labels standing on their own) display in a non-surprising fashion

g) Make bidirectional domain names in a paragraph display in a 
non-surprising fashion

Is the list a fair categorization? Should more items be added? Should 
some items be removed?