Browser IDN display policy: opinions sought

"Martin J. Dürst" duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp
Tue Dec 13 06:12:29 CET 2011


On 2011/12/13 8:03, Tina Dam wrote:
> One more thing. Perhaps we need to treat the IDN Guidelines the same
> way the protocol revision did - i.e. seperate guidelines for
> registration and resolution/display? Or is that re-opening the
> discussion that Gerv tried to avoid?

The reason this was separated in the protocol was that registering as 
yet unassigned codepoints is total nonsense, whereas accepting as yet 
unassigned codepoints for resolution/display makes sense because that 
avoids the need for software updates.

For the protocol, it made sense to be a bit looser on the receiving 
side. But for the security protections we are talking about now, and on 
the level of general guidelines, I don't see that making sense. If 
something "looks dangerous", then it shouldn't be displayed. If 
something "looks dangerous", then it shouldn't be registered.

I may be wrong, but it looks like the main problem isn't that the two 
sides might be different. The main problem is that both sides would be 
the same, and therefore every side tries to blame the other, and get 
away with it.

Regards,    Martin.


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