draft-liman-tld-names-00.txt and bidi

Andrew Sullivan ajs at shinkuro.com
Sun Mar 8 16:53:57 CET 2009


On Sat, Mar 07, 2009 at 03:43:02PM +0900, Martin Duerst wrote:
> You are right that there is a bidi issue. For some very specific
> example, please see Example 11 at
> http://www.w3.org/International/iri-edit/BidiExamples
> (please read the legends or tooltips carefully).
> 
> The reason why there are bidi issues is:
> - Non-IDN labels turn up in IDNs
> - Digits get close to RTL characters, maybe only separated by dots
> - In the bidi algorithm, numbers and dots get associated with nearby
>   text and thrown around

Ok.  Now the important question is, is it ever possible for Punycode
to produce output that ends in a digit?  I haven't run into an example
yet, but I haven't been able to convince myself that's anything but an
accident.  If someone who understands the algorithm better than I
says, "No, it can't, and here's why," then we'll be in a position to
add to draft-liman-tld-names a restriction that a TLD must both begin
_and end_ with an ASCII letter, and the problem will automatically go
away.  Otherwise, we can't make that rule.  Right?

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at shinkuro.com
Shinkuro, Inc.


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