Re: [idn] Re: IDN WG Last Call on two major changes to Stringprep

["Mark Davis" <mark@macchiato.com>]

> As I understand it, this essentially implies that an IDN, or at
> least an IDN that might contain RTL characters, is not
> interpretable unambiguously unless it appears as part of a
> fully-spelled-out URL.

No, it is the converse.

> This WG is tasked with internationalizing _domain names_, not
> URLs. An acceptable URL solution may also be a requirement, but
> that is a side-effect.

Understood. However, having these restrictions in domain names is a
step towards internationizing URLs, and one without which it would be
difficult.

Mark
__________
http://www.macchiato.com
◄  “Eppur si muove” ►

----- Original Message -----
From: "John C Klensin" <klensin@jck.com>
To: "Mark Davis" <mark@macchiato.com>
Cc: "Simon Josefsson" <jas@extundo.com>; <paul.hoffman@imc.org>;
<Marc.Blanchet@viagenie.qc.ca>; "IETF/IDN WG" <idn@ops.ietf.org>;
"Matitiahu Allouche" <matial@il.ibm.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2002 09:20
Subject: Re: [idn] Re: IDN WG Last Call on two major changes to
Stringprep


>
>
> --On Saturday, 27 July, 2002 07:51 -0700 Mark Davis
> <mark@macchiato.com> wrote:
>
> >...
> >> During the meeting, I thought that the most straightforward
> >> method was
> >> to force the periods to be LTR. However, after looking at the
> >> results
> >> in both a RTL and LTR context, I concluded that Mati's approach
> >> would
> >> be better. The results both in terms of field order and order
> >> within a
> >> field would still be determinate. With any complete URL (with
> >> http://, ftp://, etc.) it would be easy to recognize the order
> >> in context, since the position of those initial letters would
> >> show the order.
> >> The
> >> only bad case would be where the end of the string reversed
> >> because of
> >> its surroundings, e.g.:
> >>
> >> Memory:         the url http://SOME.LARGE.mixed.CORP.org is
> >> the one Display (LTR):  the url
> >> http://EGRAL.EMOS.mixed.PROC.org is the one Display (RTL):
> >> org is the one.PROC.mixed.EGRAL.EMOS//: the url http
> >>
> >> Thus in flowing text, users would be recommended to bracket
> >> any BIDI URL with RLM (or embed the URL). E.g.
> >...
>
> Mark,
>
> As I understand it, this essentially implies that an IDN, or at
> least an IDN that might contain RTL characters, is not
> interpretable unambiguously unless it appears as part of a
> fully-spelled-out URL.  I can't imagine that being acceptable.  I
> can't even imagine it being acceptable to require that IDNs
> appear in URLs at all to be valid.
>
> To repeat something I seem to need to say in every talk I give
> about these issues,
>    "the web is not the net".
> This WG is tasked with internationalizing _domain names_, not
> URLs. An acceptable URL solution may also be a requirement, but
> that is a side-effect.
>
>        john
>
>
>