National and Local Characters for DNS Top Level Domain (TLD) Names
draft-klensin-idn-tld-05

Fundamentally, I think this is well written, but could be badly read.
Knowing John's history with this topic, I believe I understand the
impetus for putting forward a fourth choice in this critical architectural
discussion, and I appreciate the time and effort he has put into this.
Knowing as well his role in the IAB during the time in which RFC 2826
was produced, I am certain his depth of understanding of many of
these issues exceeds my own.

But I am concerned about what will happen when this is read by someone
who is not aware of this history and has no insight into the issues which
John knows so well.  (And I will happily admit that my own ignorance may
be driving my empathy for this position).  If read by someone without
a deep understanding of the need for a single DNS root and an un-partitioned
URI space, will this give rise to mischief?  I believe it could.  It is moderately
obvious that someone using local translation could translate .中 國 (4e2d, 570b)
to .tw where the dominant view would translate it to .cn .  A local translation doing that has the same
partitioning effect in URI space as multiple roots do in the DNS:  it creates a situation in which local
resolution context over-rides the overall system's ability to ensure a consistent view of the namespace.

I recommend that we ask the RFC Editor not to publish this document until it contains a discussion of
this problem (hopefully using a less hot-button example than my haste forced me to use)