Re: Layer 2 and "idn identities" (was: Re: [idn] what arethe IDN identifiers?)

[John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>]

--On Monday, 03 December, 2001 15:46 +0800 xiang deng
<deng@cnnic.net.cn> wrote:

> Correct except SC/TC conversion. There is solution on the desk,
> so it isn't  possible, it's existence.

I'm unconvinced this is true.  Please convince me.

What I think we have is:

	(i) A partial solution on the desk, one that deals with
	the 1-1 cases that do not have overlap with Korean or
	Japanese.
	
	(ii) General agreement that, however many characters (i)
	covers, some Han characters, or even Han characters for
	which simplified forms (or traditional forms) exist, are
	not covered.
	
	(iii) No plan, at least none "on the desk", about how to
	deal with those other characters.
	
	(iv) Fairly general agreement that at least some of the
	problem must be dealt with at a different sublayer or, at
	least, in some non-DNS mechanism.

It seems to me that, given the above, there are several possible
paths forward, e.g.,

(1) Decide this is a client problem, to be used in special
clients for Chinese-speaking people.   I would personally
recommend again such a solution, both because I think it will
tend to fragment the network and because client-based solutions
are notoriously hard to maintain as one, e.g., figures out ways
to deal with additional characters.   But, independent of that
preference/ advice, the details of what one does in client
software, especially client software that is not expected to be
universal, is not an IETF problem and hence should be discussed
somewhere other than on this list.

(2) Conclude that TC-SC matching is a sublayer 2 problem.  If so,
please move this discussion to the IRNSS list and, as specified
there, either recast it in the terminology of the "DNS Seearch"
document or explain why the model of that document is
inappropriate.

(3) Conclude that TS-SC matching is a sublayer 2 problem but that
some machinery, beyond IDNA (with more or less the existing
nameprep), needs to be put into the DNS sublayer to support it.
If this is the case, we need better discussion of what additional
machinery is needed and why on this list.  And, unless there is a
flaw in the reasoning above, or a significant case not
considered, the rest of the TC-SC discussion should still go
elsewhere.

   john