Comments on draft-ietf-idnabis-defs-10
John C Klensin
klensin at jck.com
Thu Sep 3 22:48:18 CEST 2009
--On Thursday, September 03, 2009 15:22 -0400 Vint Cerf
<vint at google.com> wrote:
> patch it in.
Done in Protocol-16. I'm not going to post that to the list yet
because the WG has seen the exact text being substituted in the
notes earlier and below.
john
> On Sep 3, 2009, at 2:15 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> --On Thursday, September 03, 2009 06:56 -0700 Paul Hoffman
>> <phoffman at imc.org> wrote:
>>
>>> At 9:23 PM -0400 9/2/09, Vint Cerf wrote:
>>>> as far as I am aware, we have not modified punycode
>>>> algorithm in any way.
>>>
>>> At 9:24 PM -0400 9/2/09, John C Klensin wrote:
>>>> I believe that it doesn't. It restricts the input to
>>>> Punycode but, so, albeit differently, do ToASCII and
>>>> ToUnicode. Do you see it doing anything else?
>>>
>>> Section 4.4 says:
>>>
>>> This document updates RFC 3492
>>> only to the extent of replacing the reference to the
>>> discussion of the ACE prefix. The ACE prefix is now
>>> specified in this document rather than as part of RFC 3490
>>> or Nameprep [RFC3491] but is the same in both sets of
>>> documents.
>>>
>>> That's why I put the smiley: it does modify it, explicitly,
>>> but not in a noticable way.
>>
>> Well, 3492 doesn't specify the prefix. It just refers to one,
>> by reference and usually in oblique ways. The first paragraph
>> of the introduction describes an ACE but describes the ACE as
>> consisting of a prefix followed by the Punycode-encoded
>> string. That makes it fairly clear to me that "Punycode"
>> doesn't include the prefix itself. The references to 3490
>> and 3491 are at the end of that paragraph and just says "For
>> the details of the prefix and constraints, see [IDNA] and
>> [NAMEPREP].", a sentence that, in context, cannot possibly be
>> interpreted as normative (and, indeed, those two RFCs are
>> listed as informative, not normative, references).
>>
>> The text that follows is similarly careful and oblique about
>> the prefix.
>>
>> However, if anyone really wants to engage in nit-picking about
>> this (and I don't think you, Paul, do), the paragraph quoted
>> could be changed to:
>>
>> This document does not update or alter the Punycode
>> algorithm specified in [RFC3492] in any way. That
>> document does make a non-normative reference to the
>> information about the value and construction of the ACE
>> prefix that appears "in RFC 3490 or Nameprep [RFC3491]".
>> For consistency and reader convenience, IDNA2008
>> effectively updates that reference to point to this
>> document. That change does not alter the prefix itself.
>> The prefix, "xn--", is the same in both sets of
>> documents.
>>
>> If anyone thinks that would be even a slight improvement, it
>> would only take me a few seconds to patch it in.
>>
>> john
>>
>
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