Re: [idn] UTC feedback

[Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>]

> And what do you do with the gTLDs, which need to serve
> all languages equally well ?  

the root servers set the matching policy, which is probably 
determined by ICANN.  they also set the policy for creation
of new gTLDs, and can (to some degree) choose new gTLDs 
for minimum ambiguity.

gTLDs need to serve all gTLDs equally well, but that is not
the same thing as serving arbitrary strings in every language.
all that is necessary is to resolve ambiguity between different
spellings of a gTLD.  if the number of gTLDs is relatively small 
this should not be so difficult or expensive.

> Or a country-TLD where
> there are multiple languages with conflicting casing rules ?

the country TLD sets the matching policy for that zone.
where the rules conflict, they do the best they can.

> This problem simply won't get finessed out of existence,
> no matter how much one tries, terribly sorry.

that's entirely my point.  but trying to finesse it on a global
scale is much harder than trying to finesse it on a per-zone scale.

> And how do you propose to scale the DNS if the burden
> of normalisation/canonicalisation is shifted to the servers ?

the same way it scales now.  only the authoritative servers have
this burden, and the burden varies from zone to zone according
to how much ambiguity that zone has to tolerate.  if there aren't 
enough authoritative servers for a zone, the problem can be
addressed to some degree by adding more servers and spreading the
load.

at any rate, this doesn't necessarily result in a significant 
increase in server load.  so more servers might not be necessary.

Keith

p.s. from the tone of your response and the kinds of question you
are asking I think you and I have different ideas of what I'm 
proposing - but I don't know  where the gap is.