Re: [idn] canonicalization

[Paul Hoffman / IMC <phoffman@imc.org>]

At 10:04 AM +0800 5/28/00, James Seng wrote:
>Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>>  - The same octets in a query MUST always return the same data
>>     (modulo the DNS games we all know and love :-()
>
>I suggest not to include this as it is already described in [3].

It would be good if something along the lines of what Harald 
suggested stay in the canonicalization section of the requirements. 
How about:

- The canonicalization performed MUST NOT cause the data returned to 
be different for the same request sent from different locations or to 
different servers.

>  > - A proposal SHOULD adhere as closely as possible to the Principle of
>  >    Least Astonhsiment
>
>Cool. Do you want to define "Principle of Least Astonishment"?
>
>How about this.
>
>- The protocol SHOULD have some form of canonicalization and folding rules
>   such that equivalent names are folded into one. It is understood that
>   these rules would not be 100% perfect or accurate.

Why "canonicalization and folding rules" instead of just 
"canonicalization"? We don't have hard-and-fast definitions for each, 
and it seems that the folding rules we have discussed so far would 
easily be part of the canonicalization.

>  > - A proposal MUST allow any client to interoperate correctly with any
>  >    server, as long as they implement the proposed protocol correctly
>
>This boils down to "The protocol MUST work." :P Can we leave this out?

The "any server" part is important. My proposal above rolls this in.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium