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

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

On Tue, 15 Aug 2000, Patrik Fältström wrote:

| What we need to do is to put the pieces together, and still remember
| that we do one thing, and Unicode people another.
| 
| As soon as we have (unknown) overlap, I start to get nervous.

  I strongly agree.  My sense is that this particular problem is an
important one to the IETF, and as such it will be important to build
strong consensus around the particulars of our proposed solution.  As many
people have contributed to this discussion, its clear that the linguistic
issues are extremely complex, and there is likely no 'right' answer in
some of the cases.  No matter what choice we make, someone will come
forward and say "you did such and such incorrectly".

  I would suggest that the core expertise area of the IETF is 'bits on the
wire' protocol work, and while we may have considerable interest and
expertise on the some of linguistic issues here (i.e. James' work in the
Han ideograph area), I would feel uncomfortable suggesting that we have
enough breadth and depth on the subject as a whole to make a
recommendation in some of these areas that would have enough authority.

  My instinct would be to essentially 'punt' to the Unicode Consortium
folks.  If there are areas that concern us which are not currently covered
by a UTR and probably should be, lets define the problem area and enlist
their help.

  -bws

  (Apologies for missing the point on the Hebrew optional character
issue.  I'm more of a 'bits on the wire' guy [see above] :-)