Re: Standardizing on IDNA 2003 in the URL Standard

On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Mark Davis ☕ <mark@macchiato.com> wrote:
> Rather than promoting different, arbitrary modifications of IDNA2003, I
> would recommend instead using the TR46 specification, which provides a
> migration path from IDNA2003 to IDNA2008. It is, with some small exceptions,
> compatible with IDNA2003.

Last I checked with implementers there was not much interest in that.
And to be clear, it's not different and arbitrary. The modifications
have been in place since IDNA2003 support landed in browsers. As
should have been clear to the original authors of IDNA2003 too. Nobody
is going to arbitrarily freeze their Unicode implementation.

(Aside: ToASCII in IDNA2003 applies to domain labels. It applying to
domain names in UTS #46 is somewhat confusing.)


On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 9:32 PM, Shawn Steele
<Shawn.Steele@microsoft.com> wrote:
> I concur.  We use the IDNA2008 + TR46 behavior.

Interesting. Last I checked Internet Explorer that was not the case.
Since which version is this deployed? Does it depend on the operating
system? What variation of TR46 is implemented?


On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 11:36 PM, Vint Cerf <vint@google.com> wrote:
> It seems to me that we would serve the community well if we work towards a
> well-defined and timely transition to IDNA2008. It has a key property of
> independence from any particular version of UNICODE (which was the primary
> reason for moving in that direction). It also has a canonical representation
> of domain labels which is also a powerful standardizing element. We are all
> aware of the potential for some backward incompatibility with IDNA2003 but
> the committee that developed IDNA2008 discussed these issues at length and
> obviously concluded that the features of IDNA2008 were superior over all to
> the status quo. It is a disservice in the long run to delay adoption of the
> newer design, especially given the huge expansion of the TLD space - all
> these TLDs should be developed and evolved on the IDNA2008 principles.

I don't think the committee has carefully considered the compatibility
impact. Deployed domains would become invalid. Long-standing practice
of case folding (e.g. the idea that http://EXAMPLE.COM/ and
http://example.com/ are identical) is suddenly something that is no
longer decided upon by IDNA but needs to be decided somehow at the
application-level. And when the Unicode consortium provided such
profiling for applications in the form of
http://unicode.org/reports/tr46/ that was frowned upon. It's not at
all clear what the transition path is envisioned here.


-- 
http://annevankesteren.nl/

Received on Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:32:50 UTC