RE: [idn] host name vs. domain name

["McDonald, Ira" <imcdonald@sharplabs.com>]

Hi Ran,

I quote below verbatim the first two paragraphs on page
3 of RFC 2277 (in section 3.1 'What charset to use'):

"Protocols MUST be albe to use the UTF-8 charset, which
consists of the ISO 10646 coded character set combined with
the UTF-8 character encoding scheme for all text."

"Protocols MAY specify, in addition, how to use other
charsets or other character encoding schemes for ISO 10646,
such as UTF-16, but lack of an ability to use UTF-8 is a
violation of this policy; such a violation would need a
variance procedure ([BCP9] section 9) with clear and solid
justification in the protocol specification document before
being entered into or advanced upon the standards track."

The above is not a 'mild preference'.

Cheers,
- Ira McDonald, consulting architect at Sharp Labs America
  High North Inc

-----Original Message-----
From: RJ Atkinson [mailto:rja@inet.org]
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2000 12:31 AM
To: McDonald, Ira
Subject: RE: [idn] host name vs. domain name


There is no requirement to use UTF-8 or ISO-10646.
If a WG has a technical reason to do something else,
this is permitted.  The RFC indicates a mild preference,
not a hard and fast rule.

Ran