RE: [idn] IDN priorities and requirements

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

I think the list of "places where domain names appear" is useful,
but I wanted to explore your list a litte more deeply.


> Domain names are visible in many places, for example:
> e-mail addresses, URLs,

These were the two I claimed were common...

> host names

I was claiming that most users don't see "host names" outside
of the context of URLs and email addresses. Do you mean in
response to the Unix command 'hostname'? Or some other context?

> logs

I'm not sure what kind of logs have domain names in them, that
aren't also full of other ASCII material and that are also 
commonly visible to users. Could you give some examples of
the kinds of logs & the software that writes them? 

> access lists

You mean like a 'rhosts' file? I suppose that would be one
kind of application. What other kinds of access lists contain
host names?

> traces,

These are different from logs?

> news papers, magazines,

I've seen email addresses and URLs printed in newspapers and
magazines, or else host names that are intended as URLs with
'http' implicit. But for the most part, publications use domain
names as URLs.

> server addresses, ftp addresses,

These are different from URLs, but often expressed as them.

> zone files.

I think it's stretching things to say that "zone files" are an
application where users commonly see domain names.

> It does not matter if the user is a simple non-computer expert, 
> hacker, administrator or programmer.

If any progress is to be made in this area at all, some tradeoffs
will have to be made. If it were possible to satisfy some of those
kinds of users but impossible to satisfy all of them, wouldn't you
want to prioritize?

> They all want to use
> domain names in a natural way: they want to use the characters
> of their native language. They do not want to see any encoded into
> ASCII forms!

I don't doubt that there is such a desire, but each category of
software that you want to be compatible with imposes a different
set of constraints. To make progress, it might be helpful to analyze
those constraints realistically.

> I agree with Larry that when domain names are used as an integral
> part of some thing else, like e-mail address or URL, we should not
> have different rules for different parts. The user want to have displayed
> and to type in, characters in their native language. No %-encoding,
> no ASCII-encoding, no quoted-printable please.
> 
> So this expands a little outside the DNS protocol, but is important
> for other protocols and we have to think about them too.
> 
> While IETF does focus on protocol, there should at least be some
> informal RFCs about interaction with users. It is very easy for
> software developers to forget about the users needs.

To remind you: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/idn-charter.html
says explicitly that the first action item for the working group
is:

# 1. An Informational RFC specifying the requirements for providing
# Internationalized access to domain names. The document should provide
# guidance for development solutions to this problem, taking localized
# (e.g. writing order) and related operational issues into consideration. 

I would think that an analysis of the applications for Internationalized
access to domain names, and the constraints they impose, would be
an important part of the introduction to such a document.

While the analysis for I18N of URLs and email addresses has been
studied, I'm less certain about what kinds of constraints would
be imposed by the requirement, for example, of allowing I18N names
in log files. Aren't log files usually stored in the local operating
system charset?

Larry