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Re: [idn] IDNs and email
> Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
> > At 09:15 AM 2/15/00 -0800, ned.freed@innosoft.com wrote:
> > > > | If an encoding is used which is not mapped into ASCII then there
> SHOULD
> > > > | be an ASCII-only representation of each IDN, and there MUST be a way
> for
> > > > | a program to find the ASCII-only representation (or lack of it) for
> an
> > > > | IDN.
> > >
> > >Nicely put. I agree completely.
> >
> > There are two issues here: ASCII and DNS-compatible names. Protocols like
>
> > SMTP and PKIX require ASCII, but there may be protocols that define
> > DNS-strings to single-case letters plus digits plus '-' only. If such
> > protocols exist (and I don't know that they do, but I wouldn't be
> > surprised), do we want to accommodate those as well?
>
> I don't know of any such protocols but also suspect they exist.
I do. The most common one is called SMTP (case insensitive). Go
read RFC 821 and see what is currently legal as a mail domain.
> Do we need
> to
> find an example before we start to design around them?
>
> I meant a DNS-compatible name but couldn't think of a clear way to say what
> I
> meant. What about using hostname-charset instead of ASCII-only? This
> changes
> the requirement to:
>
> | If an encoding is used which is not mapped into the hostname charset then
> | there SHOULD be a hostname-charset representation of each IDN, and there
> | MUST be a way for a program to find the hostname-charset representation
> | (or lack of it) for an IDN.
>
> There should probably be a definition of hostname-charset somewhere as well:
>
> | hostname-charset. This is the character set which is legal in legacy
> domain
> | names (before IDN). It consists of the ASCII characters A-Z (case
> insensitive
> | matching), the digits 0-9 and the hyphen.
>
> Of course if someone can find a reference instead then that would be better.
>
RFC 952 + RFC 1123 defines what is currently legal in a hostname.
> Andy
>
--
Mark Andrews, Nominum Inc. / Internet Software Consortium
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: Mark.Andrews@nominum.com