[idn] Need a new working group?

[Dan Oscarsson <Dan.Oscarsson@trab.se>]

I have read the new ideas for charter modifications and read
the discussions for a long time. I am beginning to wonder
what is really the meaning of this IDN working group
and as it looks now, maybe we need another new group.

The focus so far by many of the members of the IDN group
have been "host names" with non-ASCII characters.
For me, my interest have always been in defining how
DNS should handle non-ASCII.

Should we split the group into two?

Group one: Non-ASCII in host names from user perspective
Group two: Internationalisation of DNS.

Group one could produce:
- An RFC on how to use ACE on host names to layer non-ASCII
names on top of the old DNS protocol. Must be coodinated with the
group two which defines the DNS protocol.

- An RFC on a good ACE.

- Discuss how domain names are to be input/presented to
the user. The DNS protocol only defines that a domain name
is a sequence of labels (containg any characters) of which
are ordered hiearchically. When displayed to the user, they could
be displayed from top to bottom label, the reverse or with
other separator character then ".".
Discuss on how zone files should be entered in a user friendly way.
Discuss and create recommendations in human handling of
domain names.


Group two should produce:
- An RFC specifying how non-ASCII characters in the DNS protocol
should be handled. It should be a unified solution without
respect to a label being a host name or something else. And should
include all character data, both in labels and in records.
This includes specifying how labels with non-ASCII characters should be
transmitted to software incapable of handling non-ASCII.

- An RFC specifying how to compare two labels to identify if
they match. Like the case-insensitive rule for ASCII today but
for all characters. There are no forbidden character here but
the matching algorithm man ignore some characters during matching.


The reason I would like to see something like this split, is
that the current group seems to have forgotten DNS.
DNS is much more than just host names. We need a basic general
definition of the DNS protocol that includes how to handle
non-ASCII. With that in place, one can build more restrictive
rules and solutions for special areas like host names.

   Dan