RE: [idn] NSI Multilingual Testbed Information (fwd)

[bill@mail.nic.nu (J. William Semich)]

Ran:

At 08:46 AM 8/27/00 -0400, RJ Atkinson wrote:
>At 20:58 26/08/00, J. William Semich wrote:
>>1. It has designated UTF-8 as the preferred protocol for IDN in the BCP,
>>RFC 2277 (No matter whether used in a Standard or in a BCP, the word "MUST"
>>looks like strong language to me);
>
>        RFC-2277 says NOTHING about "UTF-8 as the preferred protocol (sic)
>for IDN".  The rest of us have read RFC-2277 by now and aren't
>going to be fooled.  In any event, UTF-8 is an encoding, not
>a protocol.  Please stop saying this.

Perhaps my informal use of the English language is intruding on the
information I have been trying to convey. How best to "modify" (in the
grammatical sense) the word "protocol" with the descriptors "UTF-8" and
"IDN" in a sentence that efficiently conveys my meaning? Try this:

"According to the BCP RFC 2277, the IETF has determined that UTF-8 is the
strongly preferred CES to be used in a protocol which is being used for
interchange of Internationalized character date."

Again, to quote the RFC and not get *me* or my writing style into the picture:

   Protocols MUST be able to use the UTF-8 charset, which consists of
   the ISO 10646 coded character set combined with the UTF-8 character
   encoding scheme, as defined in [10646] Annex R (published in
   Amendment 2), for all text.

The BCP also specifically points to several types of character data it
affects. Again, from the RFC:

   A "name" is an identifier such as a person's name, a hostname, a
   domainname, a filename or an E-mail address; it is often treated as
   an identifier rather than as a piece of text, and is often used in
   protocols as an identifier for entities, without surrounding text.

On my reading, the RFC is setting best practices for, among other elements,
interchange of data including internationalized domain names and hostnames,
which are comprised of "character data." Maybe my reading is wrong - fine.
But if it is even close to being right, is it such an error to have used
the shorter term "IDN" when referring to that?
 
I don't see how my previous point could be made much clearer, nor can I see
what it is about this simple piece of information that gives you any reason
to think I am "fooling" any one. The RFC is a public document, as you
clearly state. Besides, Harald can (and probably will) easily clear up any
misreading on my part directly.

So who's to be "fooled" and how? And why personalize the discussion with
comments like that?

The IETF has made a strong statement WRT the use of UTF-8 in
internationalizing names on the Internet. That's all I've said.

Bill