Re: [idn] Which names are valid? (was How should labels beencoded?)

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>]

--On 1. august 2001 14:03 +0100 David Hopwood <david.hopwood@zetnet.co.uk> 
wrote:

> What do you propose to call the query string used for a SRV lookup
> (e.g. "_ldap._tcp.example.com"), if not a domain name? It is certainly
> a domain name as defined and used in RFCs 1034, 1035 and 2181 (although
> not a host name).

with respect:
draft-ietf-idn-requirements-08.txt has been in the group for a LONG time.

                Harald

1.3 Definition of "hostname" and "Internationalized Domain Name"

In the DNS protocols, a name is referred to as a sequence of octets.
However, when discussing requirements for internationalized domain
names, what we are looking for are ways to represent characters that
are meaningful for humans.

In this document, this is referred to as a "hostname". While this term
has been used for many different purposes over the years, it is used
here in the sense of sequence of characters (not octets) representing a
domain name conforming to the limited hostname syntax RFC 952.

This document attempts to define the requirements for an
"Internationalized Domain Name" (IDN). This is defined as a sequence of
characters that can be used in the context of functions where a hostname
is used today, but contains one or more characters that are outside the
set of characters specified as legal characters for host names
RFC 1123.