[idn] Few comments on idna

[Marc Blanchet <Marc.Blanchet@viagenie.qc.ca>]

Hi,
 here is few comments on idna.

Marc.

- p2. "To allow such a label to be handled by existing applications, an 
"ACE label" is defined ..."
 + ACE should be spelled: ASCII Compatible Encoding.

- 3. 2). "When requirements 1 and 2 both apply, requirement 1 takes 
precedence".
 + My understanding is the inverse: i.e. requirement 2 takes precedence. I 
might be wrong.

- 4.1 ToASCII and 4.2 ToUnicode
 + the algorithm should more clearly state what happens when the "Verify 
actions" result to fail.

- 5 ACE prefix.
 "The ACE prefix, used in the conversion operations (section 4), will be 
specified in a future revision of this document.
 It will be two alphanumeric ASCII characters followed by two 
hyphen-minuses. ... "

 + I think IANA should specify the prefix in the IANA registry. Also the 
specification of the prefix (i.e. xx--) should not
 be included in this document, but is left to IANA. Or, it could be instead 
put in an IANA section in the document.

- 5 ACE prefix.
 + At the end of this section, there should be some words about the fact 
that in the long term, we might have a different prefix.
 The intent of this is only to tell developers that one way to change this 
"protocol" is through a new prefix. So implementations
 will be prepared to behave. Suggestion of wording:
 "Future revisions of this specification may involve using a different ACE 
prefix."

- 6.1 Entry and display in applications.
 "if it does, rendering the ACE SHOULD NOT be the default."
 + we should make it clear that the prefix MUST be shown if the ACE version 
is shown.  This is probably obvious for us, but the
 document is not clear about the fact that when "ACE" is used, it means 
with or without the prefix.  This comment is actually for
 most of the document. 6.4 second paragraph has the same ambiguity.

- after 8, should have an IANA considerations section. Here is a suggestion.
 IANA Considerations
 This specification requires the IANA to define a prefix that would be used 
for identifying an ACE label in a domain name.
 The prefix should be chosen to be not used at the time of the choice by 
any label in any depth of the dns tree. This might
 be impractical to find. The IANA should consult the IESG and the wg chairs 
to define such a prefix.

- 9. Security Considerations
 s/Much of the security of the Internet relies/Security on the Internet 
partly relies/


- General comment about normative references:
 + IDNA is the core/root of the documents.  It is right now not mentioning 
stringprep at all.
 It MUST clearly have a paragraph on stringprep and clearly reference it, 
with a clear "Mandatory to implement" statement.
  This is because stringprep contains important data for developers (for 
example, how to deal with versioning).





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Marc Blanchet
Viagénie
tel: +1-418-656-9254x225

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