RE: Are IDNs allowed in http IRIs?

Adam, I think you have a valid point, I would however make a simpler suggestion, which is two fold:

- introduce the concept of IRI used as presentation element of URI protocol element. In that sense http://josé.example.net/ is a presentation element for the following protocol element http://xn--jos-dma.example.net/ and as you noted http://jos%C3%A9.example.net/ is not a correct URI (per RFC 2616 referring to host itself defined in RFC 2396). I have suggested text in that sense to the IRI main editor (Martin). Having the concept of presentation element validates http IRIs which exist de facto, whatever we like it or not.

- add text in the IRI spec saying the following:
<<
When an IRI is converted to a URI, the conversion SHOULD use scheme-specific knowledge to convert appropriate components where the scheme syntax prevents the usage of percent-encoded text into such components. Lack of scheme-specific knowledge (or failure to use it) can cause valid IRIs to be converted to invalid URIs that contain percent-encoded non-ASCII text where they are not permitted.
>>
It is my opinion that anybody in its right mind would implement IRI to URI mapping considering all the schemes where 'host' is used and map accordingly (ie use Punycode). My text avoids direct reference to ACE which is in my opinion unnecessary in the IRI spec and also makes the suggestion to use scheme aware mapping much stronger (SHOULD instead of MAY). It is a SHOULD instead of a MUST simply because a scheme may be updated in the future, making the scheme awareness eventually not necessary.

Michel

Received on Friday, 19 March 2004 03:24:16 UTC