On Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 02:11:13PM -0400, Edward Lewis wrote:
> I'm not sure (as this is all second hand arguing). ;) I have gotten the
> feeling that some folks, perhaps John/perhaps not, have been arguing that
> the specs in 1123 were sacred and ought not to change lest other bad
> things happen. IOW, maintaining the status quo of a "working Internet"
> was imperative.
No, I think John is arguing that IDNs at the top level are a good
idea, but opening things any wider would be bad. I think his position
is very similar to what Patrik argued, which was that we ought to
require people to show that there is not a harm before allowing the
innovation at the top level, rather than presuming that there's no
harm and reacting if we run into one.
> I suppose my confusion is now a bit deeper. If A-labels conform to the
> rules in 1123 and all U-labels can be translated to A-labels, is BiDi an
> issue (for the DNS)?
A labels do _not_ conform to 1123. 1123 says "alphabetic", and all
A-labels have at least two hyphen-minus ("-") characters in them.
That's part of why we have a problem.
> If A-labels are what is in the DNS, isn't the DNS taken care-of?
Maybe. That's what I was asking in idnabis about. It isn't clear to
me yet whether it is possible for an A-label (which is always
xn--[output from Punycode algorithm]) to end with a digit instead of
always a letter. I _think_ it's always a letter, but I'm not totally
sure. You can definitely have digits inside a Punycode-encoded label,
because I've seen them. We may want to restrict any A-label that
happens to end with a digit anyway, because of what might happen if
that label is exposed in A-label form, but in a BiDi context.
> BTW, I was under the impression that ICANN wanted a root zone without
> any confusion, no homonyms, etc., but the IDN test bed has that - the
> two Chinese-language[0] entries are pronounced the same but written
> differently.
I am happy to report that I do not know anything about what ICANN
wants in respect of the contents of the root zone, and that I don't
yet think I need to learn.
A
--
Andrew Sullivan
[email protected]
Shinkuro, Inc.
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