Idna-update Digest, Vol 25, Issue 3

[Vaggelis Segredakis]

On Fri, Jan 02, 2009, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

>Well, I guess I should have been a little less glib.  But let me try
>to explain more clearly.

>If you are a zone operator, and you want (1) to have a number of
>things tightly packaged together and (2) not to require that the
>software of at least your entire target audience be replaced, then you
>need to come up with something rather more clever than the traditional
>editing of an ASCII zone file by someone typing in vi.  

>If I were responsible for designing this kind of software and the
>operational practices to go along with it, I'd probably do something
>like this:

>1.  Decide what things have to be "bundled together".  

>2.  Write a registry-registr[ar|ant] protocol that allowed for
>preferences within the preference tolerance of (1) to be expressed.

>3.  Write a set of database triggers that ensured that all the
>relevant parts from (2) always get handled together during DNS-data
>generation. 

>4.  Use the output from (3) to generate the DNS data every time.

>If someone is going to complain that this is way more complicated,
>hard to do, has nasty side effects and needs a lot of development,
>well, yes.  Sorry, no free lunches here. This is indeed a very
>expensive lunch.  But one that, I think, is possible for zone
>operators who want to support that level of flexibility.  


Dear Andrew,

First of all please accept my clarification that I am not complaining and my
registry has already put a significant amount of money and effort to operate
in the IDNA2003 environment.

For me this WG is working on a protocol that should allow everybody to
register & use domain names in their actual language, like if they were
registering & using domain names in Latin. 

My last email just explained why in Greek it is already required of the
registry to DNAME different Greek (not Greek/Latin) domain names just
because a "tonos" is required for most of the Greek words and every
registrant is obliged to register at least two domains for each word. We
provide the option to treat each domain name separately as well.

In IDNA2008, each registrant who wishes to register a domain name with a
final sigma will have to register four different domains (non-tonos / tonos
with sigma, non-tonos / tonos with final-sigma) and the registry has no
other way to help this registrant but to DNAME them.

Even if we were to DNAME everything, this registrant still cannot enjoy
having his email delivered to this email address, because he speaks Greek
and IDN DNS will require from him to set up four different zones and four
mailservers if he really wishes his email to arrive at destination no matter
how a Greek person will type the word the registrant chose to register as a
domain name.

A normal registrant wants to be able to view a web page, to receive an email
or trade some goods or services through a web site. This protocol (the
previous one as well but then it was a first try) limits our options to
Latin domain names again, if you wish to be sure your domain name will
actually operate as it was originally intended. 

Some better options in the protocol have to be introduced and no registry
can fix that on its own zone files.

Kind regards,

Vaggelis