High-level comment on TR46

"Martin J. Dürst" duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp
Tue Oct 27 11:04:39 CET 2009


Hello Mark, others,

I have been thinking a bit more about TR46 
(http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/) and all the connections.

I think TR46 on a high level does try to do two things:

- Provide a well-defined mapping for domain names. I think the Unicode 
consortium is the best place to actually do this, and personally I can 
easily imagine that some IETF (or W3C) specs may refer to it.

- Try to "fix" some perceived problems in IDNA 2008 and between IDNA 
2008 and IDNA 2003 (mainly sz, final sigma,...). While the intent here 
is very well-meant, and what's proposed is definitely one possible 
solution, from an IETF perspective, the Internet (and the use of IDNs) 
is far wider than browsers and search engines, and it is highly 
desirable for all parties involved if a solution to these problems comes 
directly from the IETF.

My proposal would therefore be to split the document, e.g. as follows:
- Keep TR46 with the uncontroversial mappings (essentially the extension 
of the IDNA 2003 mappings to the IDNA 2008 repertoire)
- Submit the proposal for how to deal with both IDNA 2003 and IDNA 2008 
at the same time, and in particular how to deal with the special cases 
(called "deviations" in TR46) as an Internet-Draft (best with some 
co-authors from other affected communities, e.g. from DENIC,...). That's 
the best way to get the IETF to actually face the issues.

This is a 'refinement' from what we discussed with Larry about two weeks 
ago in Mountain View.

Regards,   Martin.
-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp


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