Charter changes and a possible new direction

[Patrik Fältström]

On 14 jan 2009, at 04.19, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> So, I have two questions:
>
> 1.  Just how bad is it to tie IDNA to a particular version of
> Unicode, and why?  (Ok, maybe this is two questions.)

Mainly because if a new version of Unicode is released, a registry can  
not use the added codepoints in IDNs until there is a new version of  
IDNA released.

The way IDNA2008 is constructed today, we need a new version of  
IDNA2008 only if a codepoint has to be added to the backward  
compatibility list, and there are voices that say that that should be  
work of IANA, i.e. that not even that require a new version of Unicode.

Another reason is that a programmer that implement anything with  
Unicode can not know what version of Unicode is installed so use of  
the installed tables is just not possible if you want to be  
conformant. You have to use explicitly IDNA2003 (today) libraries and  
not any of the Unicode libraries installed, as there might be  
incompatibilities (what are unassigned codepoints for example).

> 2.  Given that our current plan is "protocol action for any change",
> how are the current IDNA drafts not themselves tied to a particular
> version of Unicode?  (Do I misunderstand that current plan?)

The plan that I am pushing for, and to be honest, I have as document  
editor not heard from the wg chair what the actual consensus is, is  
that we need protocol action for _any_change_of_the_document_, which  
implies only if changes to exceptions, backward compatibility and  
regular expressions. Not if Unicode come with a change that add things  
that does not require changes to any of those.

And, I am pushing for this just for the _first_ such change so that  
the IETF can review and decide explicitly with a given case on the  
table that the split between IETF action and IANA action is correct.  
I.e. today we have the following:

For IDNA2008 as of today:

- Changes to Unicode: No IETF action needed
- Changes to exceptions: IETF action needed
- Changes to backward compatibility list: IETF action needed
- Changes to regular expressions: IETF action needed

For IDNA2008 after first IETF action according to above list:

- Changes to Unicode: No IETF action needed
- Changes to exceptions: IETF action needed
- Changes to backward compatibility list: IANA action needed
- Changes to regular expressions: IANA action needed

For IDNAv2 we have the following:

- Changes to Unicode: IETF action needed
- Changes to regular expressions: unclear as that is not specified in  
the draft yet

    Patrik