Re: [idn] An open letter to the IDN WG (long)

[Bill Manning <bmanning@ISI.EDU>]

% So this is our dilemna.  The WG is perceived as being under
% great pressure to produce _something_ immediately, if not
% sooner.  While strawman design notes for a directory base --
% including the outlines of referencing systems, a keyword
% overlay, and discussion of how it might all be made to work
% operationally and commercially-- are in progress and should be
% ready for IETF review quite soon, there are many details and
% no possibility for "immediately".  Producing an in-DNS
% mechanism will take some of the pressure off, but risks
% delaying good-quality mechanisms for multilingual (and I do
% mean "multilingual") use of the Internet for a long time,
% perhaps forever.  And, if those delays do occur, we can, I
% think, expect to see local approaches, probably incompatible
% ones, propagate to solve local problems for local users,
% resulting in exactly the sort of fragmentation most of us
% would like to avoid.

	We can't avoid "local" optimizations. They are too easy to
	do and meet the 80% rule.  As was discussed in the bigz
	working group (circa 91), the largest single driver to a
	real directory system is encouraging the exaustion of easy
	memnonc lables (e.g. all the good names are taken) 
	Once the memnonic value of the lable is neglegible, a directory
	is a "natural" outgrowth. If we approach this with flat 
	spaces or with deep heirarchy are in some sense, cosmetic.
	The end result should be the same, a lable that a human can't
	possibly remember. In the addressing relem, IPv6 has already
	delivered. One reason I was so enthusiastic about IDN was the
	possibility that it would be a driver in reducing the memnonic 
	value of any given lable. (UTFx encoding vs ASCII) In hindsite
	this may have been short sighted.


% So, with the understanding that the hardest questions have no
% technical resolution, we need to decide how to proceed and, in
% particular, whether to go ahead with an identifier, DNS, and
% script-based approach to solve a problem that involves words,
% terminology, and natural language.

	Actually, the hardest questions have the simplest answers.
	Accepting the answer might be hard. :)
	To the extent that we can push a reduction on memnonoic value
	in lables, the sooner we will have a compelling case for 
	directory service.

% 
%     john

	

-- 
--bill