Network Working Group                                         P. Hoffman
Internet-Draft                                            VPN Consortium
Expires: October 24, 2008                                 April 22, 2008


         Proposed High-level Changes From IDNA2003 To IDNA200x
                    draft-hoffman-idna200x-topics-03

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2008).

Abstract

   This document lists the changes that are proposed for IDNA200x.  It
   covers both the changes in the initial documents from the design team
   and other changes proposed in the Working Group.


1.  Introduction

   This document lists the high-level changes that have been proposed
   for IDNA2003 in the idnabis WG.  It does not list the low-level



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   changes, such as the disposition of individual characters.

   This is a temporary document meant for the use by the idnabis WG.
   This work is being discussed on the mailing list at
   idna-update@alvestrand.no.


2.  Proposed Changes from the Design Team Documents

   The initial set of documents for the IDNA200x effort consist of the
   following:

   o  [IDNA200X-Protocol] - Internationalizing Domain Names in
      Applications (IDNA): Protocol

   o  [IDNA200X-Tables] - The Unicode Codepoints and IDNA

   o  [IDNA200X-BIDI] - An updated IDNA criterion for right-to-left
      scripts

   o  [IDNA200X-Rationale] - Internationalizing Domain Names for
      Applications (IDNA): Issues, Explanation, and Rationale

   At the time of this writing, these documents propose the following
   changes to IDNA2003:

   1.   Update base character set from Unicode 3.2 to Unicode version-
        agnostic

   2.   Separate the definitions for the "registration" and "lookup"
        activities

   3.   Disallow symbol and punctuation characters except where special
        exceptions are necessary

   4.   Remove the mapping and normalization steps from the protocol and
        have them instead done by the applications themselves, possibly
        in a local fashion, before invoking the protocol

   5.   Change the way that the protocol specifies which characters are
        allowed in labels from "humans decide what the table of
        codepoints contains" to "decision about codepoints are based on
        Unicode properties plus a small exclusion list created by
        humans"

   6.   Introduce the new concept of characters that can be used only in
        specific contexts.




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   7.   Allowing typical words and names in languages such as Dhivehi
        and Yiddish to be expressed

   8.   Make bidirectional domain names (delimited strings of labels,
        not just labels standing on their own) display in a non-
        surprising fashion

   9.   Make bidirectional domain names in a paragraph display in a non-
        surprising fashion

   10.  Remove the dot separator from the mandatory part of the protocol

   11.  Make some currently-legal, non-IDNA labels illegal


3.  Changes Proposed by Individuals in the Working Group

   In addition to the changes above, individuals in the Working Group
   have proposed high-level changes.  These include:

   a.  Add conversion between traditional and simplified Chinese
       characters

   b.  Add guidelines or requirements for registration of character
       variants, along the lines of RFC 3743


4.  Security Considerations

   The eventual document(s) will all have security considerations
   sections of their own, some of which might point to the security
   considerations in other documents.


5.  Informative References

   [IDNA200X-BIDI]
              Alvestrand, H. and C. Karp, "An updated IDNA criterion for
              right-to-left scripts", draft-alvestrand-idna-bidi (work
              in progress).

   [IDNA200X-Protocol]
              Klensin, J., "Internationalizing Domain Names in
              Applications (IDNA): Protocol",
              draft-klensin-idnabis-protocol (work in progress).

   [IDNA200X-Rationale]
              Klensin, J., "Internationalizing Domain Names for



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              Applications (IDNA): Issues, Explanation, and Rationale",
              draft-klensin-idnabis-issues (work in progress).

   [IDNA200X-Tables]
              Faltstrom, P., "The Unicode Codepoints and IDNA",
              draft-faltstrom-idnabis-tables (work in progress).


Appendix A.  Change Log

A.1.  Differences between -00 and -01

   Added "Remove the dot separator from the mandatory part of the
   protocol" to the list.

   Added "Make some currently-legal, non-IDNA labels illegal" to the
   list.

A.2.  Differences between -01 and -02

   Changed the title to "Proposed...".  Reworded the abstract and intro
   to reflec this new coverage.

   Added new section for WG-submitted changes.

A.3.  Differences between -02 and -03

   Clarified bullet 3.

   Fixed the spelling of "eventual" in Section 4 and the spelling of
   Alvestrand in the references.

   Made the security considerations clearer and more vague.


Author's Address

   Paul Hoffman
   VPN Consortium

   Email: paul.hoffman@vpnc.org










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