Re: [idn] Need a new working group?

[Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <brunner@nic-naa.net>]

Dan,

The dns work should be done in dnsext.

That said, should _this_ working group divide?

A working group has technical advisors -- this one has Harald and John, both
have some expertise, but neither have the familiarity with CJK characters a
native speaker of a CJK language have. The second group could seek one or more
technical advisors, though I can't off-hand name any former or current IESG or
IAB member who wasn't culturally European.

A working group has area directors -- this one has Erik and Thomas. A second
set of ADs, or a second area advisor, may be necessary. Only Erik knows if he
has the bandwidth and interest in minding two groups.

A working group has a chair, or co-chairs. Process competency and a calm
disposition are required, and anything would be better than having chair
bounce to the microphone/mailing list after every speaker/poster to blurt
out some response. It is distracting, error-prone, and absurdly personal.

There is some generica in the IDNA/Nameprep/ACE work, which is useful for
an IDNI (the 2nd "I" is for "infrastructure"), and the current scope does
not include usefor (chars in netnews headers), 822 (chars in smtp headers),
or ... .

I'd like to see a working group that is more driven by data, implementation
experience, and experimentation, than is the norm in this group.

In any really hard problem area, when it appears that a critical moment is
at hand, it is hard to justify restructuring. Unfortunately, some structures
fail at critical moments.

As the IDN WG made UTF out-of-scope, and shortly will make intermediate
mappings likewise out-of-scope, can't fix its own requirements draft (the
ACE recommendation has been there -05, since April!), either it is shaking
off unnecessary stuff as it rapidly closes on a workable solution, or it is
doing something else less functional. I think its the second.

The critical questions are when does a "dns i18n" BoF form, how clearly do
the contributors to the eventual WG and the contributors to the standing DNS
EXT WG understand their relationship (one evaluates and recommends, either
"informational" or "experimental", the other specifies, "experimental" or
"draft standard"), and how to keep the second WG from being dominated by the
most vocal and least constructive participants of the first WG. Of course,
if the IESG doesn't approve a BoF, then the group would have to work outside
of the work group structure, or try to work within this group.

I've tried the latter, I'm not satisfied. You're not satisfied. Maybe there
are others who aren't satisfied either, and who think your note is useful.
I do.

Eric