RE: [idn] punctuation

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

--On Thursday, 24 February, 2005 11:30 -0800 Michel Suignard
<michelsu@windows.microsoft.com> wrote:

> Erik, I don't think it is useful to engage on a debate about
> web site design and the appropriateness of multi node web
> site. All your points are probably valid there but they are
> mostly orthogonal to the discussion here.
> 
> I am still not convinced that reversing the display order of
> domain names is a good idea. And there are many more reasons
> that the ones I already gave, such as disruption of the
> current logical order. Especially if we can convince quickly
> ICANN and most registry orgs to effectively deprecate usage of
> all homographs of URI reserved characters. This seems to me a
> more realistic approach and it doesn't prevent browsers to pay
> attention to those homographs when they are detected in IRIs.

Michel,

If we can reach some reasonable consensus about what characters
(URI-reserved or otherwise) that ICANN should deprecate, I'm
more than happy to put my liaison hat on and forcefully carry
the message over there.  

But we need to remember that ICANN's authority, and hence the
impact of their deprecating something, is very limited.   In
particular:

	* For the gTLDs, they can create additional guidelines
	or modify the existing ones, but it is not clear how
	forcefully they can, or will, apply them if some gTLDs
	decide to ignore those guidelines.  As has been pointed
	out, the example that started these thread could almost
	certainly not have been registered if the intent of the
	existing guidelines had been observed by all relevant
	domains.
	
	* For the ccTLDs, ICANN can recommend and advise, but
	their enforcement power is between "slight" and "none",
	at least unless there is a clear violation of a standard
	(see below).
	
	* For any domain below the second level -- i.e., a
	registration in a TLD -- ICANN is generally not only
	completely lacking in authority but most of the relevant
	domain administrators don't even have a way to hear
	about the fact that ICANN has deprecated (or otherwise
	recommended against the use of) some characters.

So, yes, let's do something.  Note, fwiw, that they have opened
a public comment forum at idn-homograph@icann.org -- see the
"IDN Homograph Concerns" section on
http://www.icann.org/topics/idn.html.

But, if we think particular characters are bad news, we need to
follow up whatever actions browser-writers take spontaneously,
and whatever we ask ICANN to do, by deprecating them in
nameprep.  If those nameprep changes are implemented, then the
characters get rejected at both registration and lookup time, in
a consistent way, and get rejected in any domain and at any
level of the tree.   And violating the standard is something
that gives ICANN at least a little leverage, since most
registries have agreed -- as a consequence of accepting RFC 1591
if not by explicit agreements with ICANN, that ignoring
standards is a Bad Thing.

      john