FW: Changing the xn-- prefix

Shawn Steele Shawn.Steele at microsoft.com
Fri Mar 21 02:28:21 CET 2008



-----Original Message-----
From: Shawn Steele On Behalf Of JFC Morfin
Sent: aƞp̄et̄u t̄op̄a, iṡt̄a wiċa yazaƞ wi 20, 2008 6:25 PM
To: 'JFC Morfin'
Cc: 'ietf at mltf.org'
Subject: RE: Changing the xn-- prefix

>>Our intent is to replace the IDN resolution mechanism for
>>IE/Windows/.Net with updated tables when they become available.  We
>>would oppose anything that causes us to have multiple revisions or
>>complex code paths for edge cases.

>could you document a little more your idea? I am working on two
>drafts which could conflict or not with rigid enforcement in the
>IDN_ccTLD resolution. We discussed that too with Firefox.

We think of IDN as a pluggable component that we can just remove and stick in a newer version.  I want any IDN update to be a replacement of the existing behavior, not an addition to it.

Specifically I'm concerned that if there's a new xo-- or xp-- that we'll have to take a Unicode name, and then try several versions of IDN until we find one that works.  Certainly our customers are going to continue to expect the xn-- names to continue to work in any updates to IE.

If we have to try an xo-- and then fall back to xn-- anyway, we'd end up with the worst of xn-- behavior, so there'd be little point to the security improvements being discussed.  I assume nobody's suggesting that clients ONLY support the new names and not the old names?

- Shawn


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