Browser IDN display policy: opinions sought

Gervase Markham gerv at mozilla.org
Mon Dec 19 11:42:13 CET 2011


Hi Raed,

Thank you for your input.

I would say that the vendor you quote is using sloppy language and it's
not actually about 'prioritizing English', but your point about
first-class citizenship is a good one.

If all registries were are responsible as yours, there would hardly be a
need for browser restrictions on IDN display at all (perhaps just a
blacklist of homographs for "." and "/", and that should have been
achieved by IDNA2008 anyway).

> IDNs should not be treated as second-class citizens on the Internet.

I entirely agree. This is why we went for option B - once a registry has
a responsible policy, their IDNs are treated as first-class citizens
everywhere (at least, in Firefox). No additional configuration required.

Unfortunately, IDNs are still not treated as first-class citizens. So
the question is: how do we get from where we are now to a situation
where they are treated that way?

Gerv


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