Re: [idn] Fast nameprep vs. slow nameprep

["D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>]

Karlsson Kent - keka writes:
> Do you expect system
> providers to make a special "IDN mode" for the keyboards?

It seems that no effort is necessary for European locales: the existing
keyboard interfaces already produce KC-normalized strings.

(I have no idea why you're worried about soft hyphens. Why would a user
type a soft hyphen inside a domain name? The keyboard interface doesn't
have to remove them; they simply won't work.)

In Japan, on the other hand, we've heard that users already have to
change keyboard modes to type domain names. Otherwise they don't even
get the right dot!

> If you paste in text,

Good UTF-8 domain names will be preserved by copy-and-paste. There's no
need for further nameprep.

> Can please the keyboard interfaces be left out of this discussion.
> It's far out of scope for the IDN WG.

Wrong. The whole point of IDNs is to let users read and write non-ASCII
characters in domain names. The entire path from keyboard to computer to
screen---as the charter says, ``the use of such names by humans''---is
within the scope of the IDN WG.

---Dan