IDNs in the root

Patrik Fältström patrik at frobbit.se
Fri Jan 23 08:17:25 CET 2009


As editor of one of the documents in this wg, I have of course been in  
contact with the broader Internet Community to seek input, and not  
only been looking at active participants in the wg, or postings on the  
list. Specifically as a lot of the discussions that only is mentioned  
here on this list in reality have taken place elsewhere (for example  
in the discussions surrounding the IDN process in ICANN and the  
various (more or less) ad-hoc groups connected with it). Based on  
those discussions, I have seen the same indications as Harald and Tina  
(and other people that have mentioned trouble with the IDNAv2  
limitations).

As a participant in the wg, I have in earlier messages related to the  
IDNAv2 proposal from Paul stated that I do not see any ability to move  
forward without any regular expressions as part of the standard, but  
if we where to remove them, the IDNA2008 proposal I think is still  
much better as it is agnostic of the version of Unicode used.

I see no future for the IDNAv2 proposal. It cements many of the  
problems we have with IDNA2003, and we will be forced to fix them  
anyway, with a later version of IDNA, when we have many more IDN- 
domain names registered. This I also say with my experience as one of  
the persons that worked a lot with IDNA2003 (as did Paul and others as  
you know).

Therefore, I once again state my view that is the same as Haralds,  
that we are almost done. I at the same time want to thank Mark for the  
list of "outstanding issues".

That I think more than anything show how close we are.

This discussion by itself has also delayed the hand over of the  
documents to the AD for IETF last call, I say although I am at the  
same time strongly in favor of rising issues earlier rather than  
later. So I also want to thank Paul for brining up the issues he has  
now, and not later. The later issues are rised, the more destructive  
they are for the collaboration in the IETF and the ability to create  
effective standards.

     Patrik

On 23 jan 2009, at 08.05, Tina Dam wrote:

> For obvious reasosns I completely agree with Harald, and would like  
> to add one more thing:
>
> Registration under these TLDs will also be affected, so its not just  
> the TLDs.
>
> About which scripts people are interested in, the full overview will  
> be posted, hopefully next week, when I return from a meeting in  
> europe (currently). But meanwhile I don't think there is any harm in  
> saying that there in fact is an interest expressed in a yiddish  
> string.
>
> Tina
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: idna-update-bounces at alvestrand.no <idna-update-bounces at alvestrand.no 
> >
> To: Paul Hoffman <phoffman at imc.org>
> Cc: idna-update at alvestrand.no <idna-update at alvestrand.no>
> Sent: Thu Jan 22 20:37:02 2009
> Subject: Re: IDNs in the root
>
> Paul Hoffman skrev:
>> At 4:55 AM +0100 1/23/09, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>>
>>> For one thing, that makes "IDNAv2" likely to be finished well  
>>> after IDNs have been introduced in the root.
>>>
>>
>> Serious question: why is this at all relevant? Is there any IDNs  
>> that are meant to be entered in the root that will have a different  
>> encoding under IDNA2003 than under IDNA2008 or contain characters  
>> that make them unrenderable in IDNA2003?
>>
>>
> There are many strings for which registration could be requested under
> IDNA2003 that cannot be registered under IDNA2008 (the symbols being  
> the
> most prominent example). ICANN is aghast at the idea of having to  
> allow
> something to be registered in the root and then having to take it out
> when the rules change.
>
> I haven't seen anyone claiming that they want to register a TLD in
> Dhivehi or Yiddish (the two BIDI cases where it matters that 2003 is
> more restrictive than 2008). But there are people arguing for
> registration of a TLD with a ZWNJ in it.
>
> With the relatively restrictive rules that ICANN has put in place,  
> it's
> not likely that any problems will be caused - but one reason for ICANN
> having to specify the restrictive rules in full rather than saying
> "stuff legal under 2008 is OK" and adding some short list of
> restrictions is that 2008 is not finished.
>
> In my ICANN role, I want to have stable rules that I can reference,  
> and
> the never-ending IDNA wrangling gives the impression of instability,
> even though the actual changes we're discussing in allowed strings at
> this stage of 2008's development range from small to microscopic.
> ("IDNAv2" is another matter. It means we have to do it all over  
> again.)
>
>                        Harald
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