Re: [iri] #44: Reference Unicode TR 46, and if yes, how?

--On Wednesday, November 09, 2011 15:33 -0700 Peter Saint-Andre
<stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:

> On 10/21/11 4:50 PM, iri issue tracker wrote:
>> # 44: Reference Unicode TR 46, and if yes, how?
>> 
>> 
>> Comment (by duerst@…):
>> 
>>   It may make sense to watch other internet drafts as they
>>   move through the IESG for approval, and then look at how we
>>   can reuse their text. (As an example,
>>   http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-websec-origin-06
>>   mentions both IDNA 2003 and 2008, in
>>   http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-websec-
>>   origin-06#section-8.4, IDNA dependency and migration.)
> 
> <hat type='individual'/>
> 
> It's not clear to me how UTR 46 is quite on-target for IRIs in
> general. If anything, UTR 46 might be referenced from one of
> the IDNA specs, but not from the IRI spec (IMHO).

Peter,

Let me say that a little more strongly.  URIs and IRIs need to
be in some sort of reduced canonical form or basically all hope
of comparing them (including for caching purposes) without some
rather complicated algorithm disappears.  To the extent to which
they are a good idea at all, mapping procedures like UTR 46 and
RFC 5895 are useful for providing users with more convenience
and flexibility.  But, to the extent to which URIs and IRIs are
going to be used between systems, used to identify cached
content, etc., they just don't belong in them.   Worse, neither
UTR 46 nor RFC 5895 (especially the former) are general-purpose
mapping/ equivalence routines.  They are specific to IDNA and,
to a considerable measures, motivated by a desire to smooth out
IDNA2003 -> IDNA2008 transition.

     john

Received on Wednesday, 9 November 2011 23:15:00 UTC