Re: [idn] Document Status?

["Adam M. Costello" <idn.amc+0@nicemice.net.RemoveThisWord>]

"JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@jefsey.com> wrote:

> 1. would it not be a good occasion of getting rid of the odd phrase
> about domain/host names and to introduce a stable wording such as
> "internet name" and "international internet names" or "multilingual
> internet names" which corresponds to the compromise we actually use?

Various people have had various discussions trying to come to a common
understanding of the precise meanings of "domain name" versus "host
name", with very little success.  Just about the only thing everyone
agrees on is that every host name is a domain name, but some domain
names might not be host names.  Settling this type-of-names issue is
beyond the scope and ability of this working group.  IDNA is a mechanism
for allowing non-ASCII characters to be used in domain names, whatever
those might be.  Internationalized domain names can be used wherever
domain names can be used, wherever that might be, except in non-IN
class DNS resource records (this exclusion is stated in the forthcoming
idna-11 draft).

> - I am concerned about using a concept (international) for another
> (multilingual) when the international concept may become another issue
> with national DNS views.

I don't know exactly what the difference is between internationalization
and multilingualization.  I think one reason the latter term was
not used is that domain names have no language tag.  Maybe there
were other reasons, or maybe it was arbitrary.

> 2.  I am confused about the implications of the proposed change of
> part 7.

Are you referring to the first paragraph of section 7?  The change
between idna-09 and idna-10 was a failed attempt at clarification.  The
forthcoming idna-11 rewords that paragraph as:

    Existing DNS servers do not know the IDNA rules for handling
    non-ASCII forms of IDNs, and therefore need to be shielded from
    them.  All existing channels through which names can enter a DNS
    server database (for example, master files [STD13] and DNS update
    messages [RFC2136]) are IDN-unaware because they predate IDNA, and
    therefore requirement 2 of section 3.1 of this document provides the
    needed shielding, by ensuring that internationalized domain names
    entering DNS server databases through such channels have already
    been converted to their equivalent ASCII forms.

Does that help?

> Could we not just define a "DNS character set" (as "0-9 a-Z -."       
> today) and say that it can extend with DNS specifications.            

The DNS standard (RFCs 1034 and 1035) has already defined the DNS
character set to be US-ASCII.  (It allows all octets 0..255, but the
character set is ASCII; the standard assigns no interpretation to octets
128..255.)

> 3. is "IESG--" meant to stay, or is it temporary?

The draft says:

    [[ Note to the IESG and Internet Draft readers: The two uses of the
    string "IESG--" below are to be changed at time of publication to a
    prefix which fulfills the requirements in the first paragraph.  IANA
    will assign this value. ]]

    The ACE prefix, used in the conversion operations (section 4), is
    two alphanumeric ASCII characters followed by two hyphen-minuses.

Does that answer your question?  If not, I must not understand your
question.

AMC