RE: [idn] Requirements: sorting

[Jonathan Rosenne <rosenne@qsm.co.il>]

If sorting is needed for the internal processing of the DNS, it can be plain
binary.

I think it would be simpler to require "canonicalisation" by the browser or
user agent. This will better allow internationalization as an extension of
current protocols, because the user agent will need such an extension any
way. If we manage to make a good design, then maybe the only impact on the
rest of the system would be to allow longer strings, so that we can get long
enough names in any language although they get transmitted with each
character represented by several ASCII characters.

Jony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-idn@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-idn@ops.ietf.org]On
> Behalf Of Paul Hoffman / IMC
> Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 6:15 PM
> To: idn@ops.ietf.org
> Subject: [idn] Requirements: sorting
>
>
> In the second paragraph of section 2.4, it says:
>
> >The DNS has to match a domain name in a request with a domain name held
> >in one or more zones. It also needs to sort names into order. It is
> >expected that some sort of canonicalisation algorithm will be used as
> >the first step of this process. This section discusses some of the
> >properties which will be required of that algorithm.
>
> I couldn't find any requirement in RFC 1034 or RFC 1035 that required
> sorting by names. Is this requirement in any other DNS standard?
> If not, I
> strongly suggest we remove the second sentence of this paragraph, since
> sort is incredibly problematic in internationalization.
>
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --Internet Mail Consortium
>
>