idna-mapping update

Kenneth Whistler kenw at sybase.com
Tue Dec 22 03:28:03 CET 2009


Vint,

> So perhaps the sensible thing is to engage on the question
> of mappings that seem to make sense on an ongoing basis
> and those that really ought to end at some point (examples of
> these would be sharp-s and final sigma)?

We've already agreed we wouldn't be mapping those special
cases, so as not to otherwise upset the consensus here.
Those are part of the "deviation" class in the IDNAMapping.txt
table, and the suggestion Michel made would be to *NOT* map
those. So they are off the table, anyway.

The problem is the other 3807 mappings where the behavior
of IDNA 2003 is inconsistent with the generic suggestions
in the current mapping document. And no, I don't think it
is sensible to start trying to talk about all of them
on a case-by-case basis, to determine whether they
should or should not be mapped.

Either we make no recommendation about them at all.

Or we recommend a maximally IDNA-2003 compatible mapping.

I don't see any value in spending more years trying to parse
out some middle ground here, arguing about what is really a
big pile of compatiblity crap in the standard for interoperating
with largely defunct old charsets anyway.

> 
> could that be a part of the effort proposed by Cary Karp?

I would like to see a transition effort focussed on the
important characters that people have a stake in -- notably
the sharp-s and the final sigma, rather than deep-ending
on a case-by-case examination of all the rest of this
stuff. I suspect that guidelines for registries are going
to be much more focussed on what to do with all the
rest of the useful PVALID characters in the first place.

--Ken



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