Re: [idn] comments on IDNA-04

["James Seng/Personal" <jseng@pobox.org.sg>]

> ToASCII doesn't convert to ACE. It converts to ASCII (in particular,
> if the string contains only ASCII characters, the result will not be
ACE).

It depends how you define ACE right? :-) (I think that was not defined
anywhere yet ever since the term was coined by Dan Occarson.)

I could defined ASCII string as a subset of ACE, therefore, ASCII is
also an ACE.
e.g. An ACE without ACE tag is a valid ACE which decodes to ASCII range

And subsequently, an ACE with an ACE tag that decodes to ASCII is
invalid ACE.

> > # ToASCII consists of the following steps:
> > #
> > #    1. If all code points in the sequence are in the ASCII range
(0..7F)
> > #       then skip to step 3.
> >
> > Step 1 seem to be optimization, but not a required step.
>
> It is required.

Why is it required? Step 4 repeat its again. Step 2 [NAMEPREP] only
effect on ASCII input is case folding.

> Is there any particular reason to reserve the possibility of this
being
> a suffix? The space of names with "xx--" prefixes has already been
reserved,
> in the sense of warning registrars that it may be used for IDN.

Is there a reason that it *must* be in the form of prefix "xx--"?

Why not suffix --xx or a "x-" prefix followed by "-x" suffix?

What if we cant find an common "xx--" prefix according to aceid process?

I feel that the selection of a final ACE tag is an IANA decision.
Technically, prefix or suffix, it works as well.

> I don't think this is a good way of handling zone files, but I do
think
> that the zone file format is entirely within the scope of an IDN
proposal
> (as a format for zone transfers and for interoperability between
different
> server implementations, not as the required representation of a zone).
> This is how IDNA-04 handles it - by requiring ACE in zone files.

It is a mistake to standardized zone file format in the first place.

What if I am using a DNS server which do not have a zonefile but it is
stored in database?

-James Seng