Re: [idn] Adding "optional" characters in draft-ietf-idn-nameprep

["Brian W. Spolarich" <briansp@walid.com>]

On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:

| a) We can ignore these characters on input (that is, toss them out of 
| the input stream).

  This would be kind of ugly from an 'intuitiveness' standpoint.  Throwing
away bytes that the user supplies seems like a bad idea, unless you can be
fairly certain that this behaviour matches the expectations of the vast
majority of 'reasonable users' (whatever that might mean).  

| b) We can prohibit the characters on input.

  Ack, I don't like this either.  How are we treated prohibited
characters?  Stripping them out of the stream, or are we expecting the
resolver to complain to the user?

| c) We can allow them in names. This would mean that people 
| registering names would have to register them with and without the 
| characters (possibly in many combinations).

  I'm not sure I see this as a requirement.  Why should the DNS be this
smart?  If I put the string in the BIND zone file with the vowels, then I
should expect to require them on the other end.  I think realistically
users would at most store two versions of the label: one completely
without the optional characters, one completely with.

  My sense is that it is better to proscribe as little as is practical and
let the user community establish their own conventions (e.g. the 'www'
label for identifying web sites).

  -bws