I have read the new ideas for charter modifications and read the discussions for a long time. I am beginning to wonder what is really the meaning of this IDN working group and as it looks now, maybe we need another new group.
The focus so far by many of the members of the IDN group have been "host names" with non-ASCII characters. For me, my interest have always been in defining how DNS should handle non-ASCII. Should we split the group into two? Group one: Non-ASCII in host names from user perspective Group two: Internationalisation of DNS. Group one could produce: - An RFC on how to use ACE on host names to layer non-ASCII names on top of the old DNS protocol. Must be coodinated with the group two which defines the DNS protocol. - An RFC on a good ACE. - Discuss how domain names are to be input/presented to the user. The DNS protocol only defines that a domain name is a sequence of labels (containg any characters) of which are ordered hiearchically. When displayed to the user, they could be displayed from top to bottom label, the reverse or with other separator character then ".". Discuss on how zone files should be entered in a user friendly way. Discuss and create recommendations in human handling of domain names. Group two should produce: - An RFC specifying how non-ASCII characters in the DNS protocol should be handled. It should be a unified solution without respect to a label being a host name or something else. And should include all character data, both in labels and in records. This includes specifying how labels with non-ASCII characters should be transmitted to software incapable of handling non-ASCII. - An RFC specifying how to compare two labels to identify if they match. Like the case-insensitive rule for ASCII today but for all characters. There are no forbidden character here but the matching algorithm man ignore some characters during matching. The reason I would like to see something like this split, is that the current group seems to have forgotten DNS. DNS is much more than just host names. We need a basic general definition of the DNS protocol that includes how to handle non-ASCII. With that in place, one can build more restrictive rules and solutions for special areas like host names. Dan
