[idn] IDN priorities and requirements

["Larry Masinter" <LM@att.com>]

Internationalization of domain names only matters when domain names appear
to users or users have to type them in. Otherwise, domain names
would be invisible protocol elements, and there would be no more reason
to try to internationalize them than there would be to have a german
version of "MAIL FROM" in SMTP or a Chinese rendering of "HEAD" in HTTP.

The requirements for internationalization of domain names should
start from an analysis of "in which circumstances do domain names
appear to users or users must type them in".

Some people seem to have started from somewhere else, but I think that
the lack of the simple initial analysis has led the group down a couple of
garden paths as well as ratholes.

I claim that there are only two applications where domain names
are commonly visible to users and they must see them and type them
in. Those two applications are: eail addresses and URLs. I believe,
then, that any discussion of REQUIREMENTS for IDN should focus on
the requirements imposed by those two applications.

A working group designing a PROTOCOL for IDN might want to rule
I18N of other components of email addresses and URLs out of scope,
but when doing requirements analysis, it is an important requirement
to be compatible with the context. It would be bad if the rule for
I18N of the LHS of an email address (before the @) were different than
the rule for I18N of the RHS. And it would be bad if the rule for
I18N of URLs were different than the rule for I18N of the DNS component
of the URL.

That is why I think that the working group should START (at its first
meeting, despite the fact that there's a mailing list chattering about
other topics) with a discussion of I18N of email addresses and URLs.

It was for this reason that I was encouraging that discussion of URL
internationalization be on the agenda for the next IETF meeting. I think
that some of the meeting should also be put aside to discuss the
requirements
for email address I18N.


The scope of the working group in
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/idn-charter.html
explicitly states that the scope should cover the use of such names by
people and application programs, and that at least some analysis
of the compatibility requirements means looking at the primary uses
of domain names in applications where they are visible.

Regards,

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net