Internationalized Domain Editors : Mhd. Elfatih Altijani.
Names Registration and Khaled Al Ahmad.
Administration Guidelines Omar Bakleh.
for Arabic Characters Group Reem Dannan.
of Languages
(Arabic, Persian, Urdu,...) Authors: Rifaah Ekrema
<draft-bakleh-reg-adm-acg-apu-01.txt> Fidaa Aljundi
[Target Category: Standards Track] Mohamed A. Elhamalaway, Ph.D.
Expires: February, 10, 2005 Rashed Zantout, Ph.D.
Ahmad Alkassoum, Ph.D.
AbdulRahman Aljadhai Ph.D.
Yasir El Ameen
Sameh Nouh
Sami Taieb Alasmaa
September, 8, 2004
By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents
that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he
or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of
which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in
accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.
Internationalized Domain Names Registration and
Administration Guidelines for Arabic Characters Group of
Languages (Arabic, Persian, Urdu,...)
Status of this Memo:
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance
with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 except that the right
to produce derivative works is not granted.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.
Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as
Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of
six months and may be updated, replaced, or to be made obsolete by
other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-
Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in
progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed
at: http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
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Abstract:
This document provides guidelines for zone administrators(including
but not limited to registry operators and registrars), and
information for all domain names holders, on the administration of
those domain names which contain characters drawn from Arabic
Characters Group of Languages. Other language groups are encouraged
to develop their own guidelines as needed, based on these guidelines
if that is helpful.
The document gives basic guidelines for IDN registrars (as it
is the case for IETF Document that talks about Japanese, Chinese
and Korean domain name registration "RFC 3490"). The document
provides also information for owners of IDN that contains Arabic
characters on name reservation process. The document does not cover
Arabic gTLD or ccTLD problems.
Comments on this document can be sent to the authors at
arabic-idn-admin@aietf.org.
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Table of content:
0. Pre-Note for ASCII-version of this document.................4
1. Introduction................................................4
2. Specialty of Arabic Characters Group of languages...........4
3. Arabic Domain Names Recommendations.........................5
4. Basics of searching for Arabic Domain Names.................7
5. Ways of saving an Arabic Domain Name........................7
6. Administration framework of Arabic Domain names.............8
7. Principles underlying these guidelines......................8
8. Registration of IDL.........................................8
9. Versioning of the language character variant tables.........9
10. Technical Recommendations.................................10
11. Full Copyright Statement..................................10
12. Security Considerations...................................11
13. IANA Considerations.......................................11
14. References................................................11
15. Terms.....................................................11
16. Authors...................................................12
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0. Pre-Note for ASCII-version of this document
In order to make meanings clear, especially in examples used
to clarify some ideas, such examples will be written using their
Unicode representation according to Unicode Standard 3.0.
1. Introduction:
Introducing domain names as addresses on the internet added a
new vision to the Internet, it made internet addresses easy to
remember, and meaningful more than using sequences of numbers that
does not mean any thing to their user. Nowadays Internet users are
looking forward to surf on the net using more meaningful names in
their own language. Such names are called Internationalized Domain
Names (IDNs). This demand opened a wide field of research and ideas
as wide as the diversity of languages used by the people on the
earth. Each of these languages has its own writing and reading
rules. This fact threatens the integrity and the stability of
Internet, unless we invent a good solution that respects and
controls this mixture of rules and cultures and represents it with
a unique, robust and easy-to-use way.
2. Specialty of Arabic Characters Group of Languages:
Arabic language is the official language of 22 countries; it is
also used by more than 43 Islamic countries that use Arabic
characters and scripts. In other words more than one billion
potential users could be interested in Arabic Domain Names. The
Arabic language as well as all Arabic Characters Group of Languages
(Persian, Urdu, Pashto, ..) has many specialties that have to be
considered when specifying any solution for Arabic Domain Names.
The main specialties of these languages are summed up in the
following:
1.2. Scripts are written from right to left.
2.2. The shapes of the character change in most cases according
to its location in the word.
2.3. Characters within the word are mostly conjugated with
preceding and succeeding characters.
2.4. Some characters does not conjugate with following character.
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2.5. The structure of the sentence starts from the most general to
the more specific (the opposite of the English language)
(Internet draft) in Arabic is said:( draft {of} Internet).
2.6. Special characters called Tashkeel are used in order to give
the right pronunciation for the word which affects the meaning.
In other words tashkeel can give one word two or More different
meanings. Tashkeel is not a seprate character by itself,
but it modifies a normal Arabic character to give it the right
pronuciation It has to be noted here that word meaning is mostly
known from the context of the sentence or even the phrase in which
the word is used. For Internet names these special signs have to
be included but their application in the Internet Domain Names
could be delayed for the time being.
2-7. Correct words are written in a unique way, but the character
shaddah (U+0651); which falls under the tashkeel signs and
means doubling the letter associated with it; sometimes is
implicit in the word and sometimes is written. In these two
cases the same word; with or without shaddah; has (often) the
same meaning; but in some cases shaddah can change the
meaning of the word. So to decide considering or ignoring
such character an algorithm has to implemented.
2.8. Correct orthographical practices about Hamza associated with
or without Alef and Yeh have to be followed. The same applies
to Yeh, Heh and Teh Marbuta.
3. Arabic Domain Names Recommendations:
3.1. Arabic domain names must allow the use of (SPACE)
character. This condition is vital, as Arabic characters (as cited
above) can be conjugated with each other and have different shapes
depending on their position in the word. If we do not allow the
space, words that form the ADL will be misread and misunderstood by
the users. The use of dash character (-) to separate words is NOT
acceptable according to IDNA (RFC-3490) which prevents the use of
characters that belong to another language when reserving a name
for a certain language, besides the fact that this character is not
used in Arabic, giving an odd view of the domain name.
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3.2. Solving the issue that results form shaddah could be done
by an algorithm that generates all possible synonyms that results
from the implicit existence of shaddah. Grammatical rules that
controls the implicit existence of shaddah do exist. Such procedure
will prevent registering the same word that contains shaddah more
than once according to the existence or the absence of this
implicit shaddah by different individuals. Explicit shaddah which
does not come from grammatical rules have to be treated as a
character, so the registration system have to consider the
existence or the absence of this shaddah as a differentiator
between different domain names.
3.3. Tashkeel Embodiment [Shadda (U+0651), Fatha (U+064E), Damma
(U+064F), Kasra (U+0650) and Superscript Aleph (U+0670)] must be
taken in the accredited character table, as it will give the
possibility to register one name more than once by using these
tashkeel characters with some or all alphabetical characters of a
certain name (there are 8 possible usage of tashkeel characters
that can be used with every other character). In spite of the need
to use these characters for correct Arabic Domain Names, we can
postpone using these five characters for future use. So tashkeel
characters have to be added to the accepted character set of Arabic
Domain Names but they have to be ignored currently in the
registration system. Meanwhile registration systems have to equate
Alef Maksura (U+0649) with Yeh (U+064A) in their processing
preventing registering more than one domain name based on these two
characters.
3.4. Future standards for Arabic Domain Names have to abide to
the specificity of the Arabic characters group of languages, which
is also valid for all other language groups. A special attention is
drawn to (RFC 3490) which does not allow mixing characters from any
group of languages with characters belonging to another group.
The above recommendations are valid for Persian, Pashto and Urdu
and other languages which use Arabic Characters.
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4. Basics of searching for Arabic Domain Names:
Name variants must be considered when searching an ADL, if any
name in an ADL package is the subject of a name resolving query, a
positive answer is to be given if the package was reserved (except
when using one of that common abbreviations). The resolving system
on the client side must not ignore tashkeel for future
developments, and it should abide to the rules dealing with
shaddah.
5. Ways of saving an Arabic Domain Name:
5.1. Reservation of an ADL:
As it is mentioned above, similarity cases (Name variants) must
be considered when reserving an Arabic domain name, all names
resulting from the similarity cases must be reserved, this will
prevent reserving different Arabic names that actually indicates
the same content by different persons. We can use the following
steps when reserving an Arabic domain name:
IN = IDL to be registered
if Is Valid(IN) then
Begin
For each Name in [Names variants of (IN)] do
If Is Valid (Name) Then
Reserve Name
End If
End For
End If
Where Is Valid÷ as some algorithm that verifies if that the name
is compliant with the ADLs standards? We will call the ADL variants
as ADL package.
Registering town, city and country names as well as names bearing
pure religious meanings could not be registered as Arabic Domain
Names. At the same time the system should not allow registering
names having meanings that contradict the culture of the people of
the Arabic characters group of languages. The system must also
abandon registering linguistically non-correct names.
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5.2. Activation and deactivation of an ADL:
If any name of an ADL package is to be activated or deactivated
ALL names within the ADL package must be activated and deactivated
at the same time, the administration system must provide some
mechanism to insure this process.
5.3. Deleting an ADL:
All names in an ADL package must be deleted when any name in the
package is requested to be deleted.
6. Administration framework of Arabic Domain Names:
The ADL Administration framework is responsible of affording a
mechanism that respects all the previous conditions of dealing with
an ADL.
7. Principles underlying these guidelines:
The previous guidelines must be considered with all Arabic
characters group of languages. Registration systems for each
language could be separated so that every language has its own
registration systems. At the same time coordination between these
systems is required to prevent reserving some words that have the
same writing in more than one language but may have different
meaning in another language.
This must not affect the integrity of the Internet, as users of
a certain national domain name must be able to use domain names of
an other nationality. This can be accomplished by giving each
nationality of those who use the same characters a special string
as a Nationality Identifier (or NID). This NID will help the ADL
resolving system to determine the parameters of the " ToAscii "
function (RFC 3490).
8. Registration of Arabic ADL:
ALL the names contained in an ADL package must be reserved
automatically by the reservation system. This will prevent
registering ADLs that have the same meaning but written differently
by more than one person.
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9. Versioning of the language character variant tables:
It is recommended to use the last version of the UNICODE. Only
the following Unicode characters are accepted in Arabic domain
names (according to Arabic Language standards).
U+0020 SPACE
U+0621 ARABIC LETTER HAMZA
U+0622 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH MADDA
U+0623 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH HAMZA
U+0624 ARABIC LETTER WAW WITH HAMZA
U+0625 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH HAMZA BELOW
U+0626 ARABIC LETTER YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE
U+0627 ARABIC LETTER ALEF
U+0628 ARABIC LETTER BEH
U+0629 ARABIC LETTER THE MARBUTA
U+062A ARABIC LETTER TEH
U+062B ARABIC LETTER THEH
U+062C ARABIC LETTER JEEM
U+062D ARABIC LETTER HAH
U+062E ARABIC LETTER KHAH
U+062F ARABIC LETTER DAL
U+0630 ARABIC LETTER THAL
U+0631 ARABIC LETTER REH
U+0632 ARABIC LETTER ZAIN
U+0633 ARABIC LETTER SEEN
U+0634 ARABIC LETTER SHEEN
U+0635 ARABIC LETTER SAD
U+0636 ARABIC LETTER DAD
U+0637 ARABIC LETTER TAH
U+0638 ARABIC LETTER ZAH
U+0639 ARABIC LETTER AIN
U+063A ARABIC LETTER GHAIN
U+0641 ARABIC LETTER FEH
U+0642 ARABIC LETTER QAF
U+0643 ARABIC LETTER KAF
U+0644 ARABIC LETTER LAM
U+0645 ARABIC LETTER MEEM
U+0646 ARABIC LETTER NOON
U+0647 ARABIC LETTER HEH
U+0648 ARABIC LETTER WAW
U+0649 ARABIC LETTER ALEF MAKSURA
U+064A ARABIC LETTER YEH
U+064E ARABIC FATHA
U+064F ARABIC DAMMA
U+0650 ARABIC KASRA
U+0651 ARABIC SHADDA
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U+0660 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT ZERO
U+0661 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT ONE
U+0662 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT TWO
U+0663 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT THREE
U+0664 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT FOUR
U+0665 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT FIVE
U+0666 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT SIX
U+0667 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT SEVEN
U+0668 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT EIGHT
U+0669 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT NINE
U+0670 ARABIC LETTER SUPERSCRIPT ALEF
10. Technical Recommendations:
10.1. The ADL solutions is like any other IDN subject of approved
RFCs that speaks about the technical details of the realization of
IDNs. A solution must be developed using the IDNA (RFC 3490). This
in our opinion is the proper way to keep the integrity of the
Internet. The solution has also to take the nameprep standard in
consideration. We have to notice that the nameprep standard denies
the use of the space in a IDNs, and have to note that such denial
is not convenient for the Arabic Languages. As mentioned above
using the space as a separator between words is not a negotiable
matter (from a lingual point of view), so any development of an ADL
solution must provide a reasonable answer that enables ADLs to
contain spaces otherwise the solution will not be compliant with
the Arabic language organizations recommendations in this field.
10.2. The solution must handle the problem of variants that
results from the existence of space as a separator, this solution
can be achieved by ignoring the absence of space between words
where a word ends with a non joint letter. The treatment of those
variants must be considered when designing the registration system.
10.3. Tashkeel must be ignored only by the registration system,
and the layer that provides the ToAscii function. This procedure
gives the user the ability to use Tashkeel without affecting the
functionality of the IDNA.
10.4. The variants resulting from the misuse of hamza with or
without Alef and Yeh and incorrect use of Yeh, Heh and Teh Marbuta
have to be treated as separate cases.
11. Full Copyright Statement:
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
This document and the information contained herein
are provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE
ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE
INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM
ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT
INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY
OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
retain all their rights.
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12. Security Considerations:
This memo relates to IETF process, not any particular technology.
There are security considerations when adopting any technology, but
there are no known issues of security with IETF Contribution rights
policies.
13. IANA Considerations
IANA is expected to create and maintain a registry of algorithm names
to be used as "Algorithm Names" as defined in Section 2.3. The
initial value should be "HMAC-MD5.SIG-ALG.REG.INT". Algorithm names
are text strings encoded using the syntax of a domain name. There is
no structure required other than names for different algorithms must
be unique when compared as DNS names, i.e., comparison is case
insensitive. Note that the initial value mentioned above is not a
domain name, and therefore need not be a registered name within the
DNS. New algorithms are assigned using the IETF Consensus policy
defined in RFC 2434. The algorithm name HMAC-MD5.SIG-ALG.REG.INT
looks like a FQDN for historical reasons; future algorithm names are
expected to be simple (i.e., single-component) names.
14. References:
[RFC3492]
Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for
Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
A. Costello
Univ. of California, Berkeley
Category: Standards Track, March 2003
[RFC3491]
Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized
Domain Names (IDN)
P. Hoffman, IMC & VPNC
M. Blanchet, Viagenie
Category: Standards Track, March 2003
[RFC3490]
Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
P. Faltstrom, Cisco, Category: Standards Track
P. Hoffman, IMC & VPNC, A. Costello, UC Berkeley, March 2003
15. Terms:
IDN: Internationalized Domain Name.
IDNA: Internationalized Domain Name in Application. (RFC 3490)
ADL: Arabic Domain Label.
Variant: A name that have the same meaning but there exist small
differences in the way they are written.
ADL package: Group of names resulting from the generation from the
variants of an ADL.
Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names;
draft-ietf-idn-nameprep, Feb 2002, Paul Hoffman, Marc Blanchet,
work in progress. Punycode: An encoding of Unicode for use with
IDNA, draft-ietf-idn-punycode, Feb 2002, Adam M. Costello,
work in progress.
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16. Authors:
Rifaah Ekrema: rifaah@aietf.org
Founder and Chairman of Arab Information Engineers Task Force.
AIETF Organization
P.O: 30775
Damascus, Syria
Phone: +963 93 611087
Fax: +963 11 2238490
rifaah@aietf.org
Mohamed A. Elhamalaway:
Computers Engineering Professor in Al-Azhar University, Egypt.
Al-Azhar University, Systems & Computers Engineering dept.
Cairo, Egypt.
Phone: +20 6321465
Fax: +20 6377446
mhamalwy@yahoo.com
Fidaa Jondi:
Director of Bunyan Co. For Projects Managements.
Nozum Alhausabah Company,
Dubai, UAE.
Phone: +971 50 6507282
fida@hausabah.com
Ph.d. Rached Zantout:
Coordinator Department of Electrical Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering,
Hariri Canadian Academy.
Beirut, Lebanon
Phone: +961 3 842076
rached@cyberia.net.lb
Ph.d. Ahmed Guessoum:
Sharjah University, Sharjah, UAE
Phone: +973 50 5190558
guessoum@sharjah.ac.ae
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Ph.D. AbdulRahman Aljadhai:
Technical Faculty, Riyadh, KSA
phone: +966 1 4529307
Mobile: +966 50 4420530
asj@linux.org.sa
Yasser Hassan Al Ameen:
President (Sudan Internet Society).
Sudan Internet Society, Khartoum, Sudan
Phone: +249 12 391157
yassir@isoc.sd
Sameh Nouh:
Head of Networks department in Damascus University,
Networks Department, Damascus University
Damascus, Syria
Phone: +963 93 469634
sameh@damasuniv.shern.net
Sami Taieb Alasmaa:
Arabic Language Teacher in Africa University.
Arabic Department, Khartoum University,
Khartoum, Sudan
Phone: +249 11 764892
Fax: +249 11 764893
dartaiebalasma@hotmail.com
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