Re: [idn] An experiment with UTF-8 domain names

["Mark Davis" <mark@macchiato.com>]

> So if the applications use the correct normalisation of UTF-8 today they
need not be changed.

There are many ways to normalize data. NamePrep is designed to provide a
single, absolutely determinate process for this IDN normalization. The
chances that the average application would, by chance, duplicate the same
normalization is minimal.

Mark
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan" <Dan.Oscarsson@trab.se>
To: <idn@ops.ietf.org>; <paf@cisco.com>
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2001 02:07
Subject: Re: [idn] An experiment with UTF-8 domain names


Patrik Fältström wrote:
>At 07.55 +0000 01-01-05, D. J. Bernstein wrote:
>>Keith Moore writes:
>>>  all apps will have to be modified (many will require significant
>>>  modification) if they want to deal meaningfully with IDNs.
>>
>>False. As demonstrated above, qmail and djbdns already work with UTF-8
>>domain names. They're both widely deployed. Apparently Microsoft also
>>has some clients and servers that work with UTF-8 domain names.
>
>They have to be changed because of the nameprep stage, which will
>have to be done regardless of whether you use UTF-8 or ACE or
>whatever encoding of Unicode.

That depends on how the applications encode UTF-8 today and how we use
UTF-8 in DNS. All that is needed is that the UTF-8 is normalised to the
form selected for use in DNS. So if the applications use the correct
normalisation of UTF-8 today they need not be changed.
The rest of the "nameprep" handling can be done in the DNS servers.

  Dan