Network Working Group                                         J. Klensin
Internet-Draft
Updates: 5892, 5894 (if approved)                           P. Faltstrom
Intended status: Standards Track                                  Netnod
Expires: April 11, 2018                                  October 8, 2017


             IDNA Update for Unicode 7.0 and Later Versions
                draft-klensin-idna-5892upd-unicode70-05

Abstract

   The current version of the IDNA specifications anticipated that each
   new version of Unicode would be reviewed to verify that no changes
   had been introduced that required adjustments to the set of rules
   and, in particular, whether new exceptions or backward compatibility
   adjustments were needed.  The review for Unicode 7.0.0 first
   identified a potentially problematic new code point and then a much
   more general and difficult issue with Unicode normalization.  This
   specification discusses those issues and proposes updates to IDNA
   and, potentially, the way the IETF handles comparison of identifiers
   more generally, especially when there is no associated language or
   language identification.  It also applies an editorial clarification
   to RFC 5892 that was the subject of an earlier erratum and updates
   RFC 5894 to point to the issues involved.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 11, 2018.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.




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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.1.  Origins and Discovery of the Issue  . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     1.2.  IDNA2008 and Special or Exceptional Cases . . . . . . . .   5
     1.3.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   2.  Document Aspirations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   3.  Problem Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     3.1.  IDNA assumptions about Unicode normalization  . . . . . .   8
     3.2.  The discovery and the Arabic script cases . . . . . . . .  10
       3.2.1.  New code point U+08A1, decomposition, and language
               dependency  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
       3.2.2.  Other examples of the same behavior within the Arabic
               Script  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       3.2.3.  Hamza and Combining Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     3.3.  Precomposed characters without decompositions more
           generally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
       3.3.1.  Description of the general problem  . . . . . . . . .  12
       3.3.2.  Latin Examples and Cases  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
         3.3.2.1.  The font exclusion and compatability
                   relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
         3.3.2.2.  The phonetic notation characters and extensions .  14
         3.3.2.3.  The stroke (solidus) ambiguity  . . . . . . . . .  14
           3.3.2.3.1.  Combining dots and other shapes combine...
                       unless... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
           3.3.2.3.2.  "Legacy" characters and new additions . . . .  16
       3.3.3.  Unexpected Combining Sequances  . . . . . . . . . . .  16
       3.3.4.  Examples and Cases from Other Scripts . . . . . . . .  17
         3.3.4.1.  Scripts with precomposed preferences and ones
                   with combining preferences  . . . . . . . . . . .  17
         3.3.4.2.  The Han and Kangxu Cases  . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
     3.4.  Confusion and the Casual User . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
   4.  Implementation options and issues: Unicode properties,
       exceptions, and the nature of stability . . . . . . . . . . .  18
     4.1.  Unicode Stability compared to IETF (and ICANN) Stability   18
     4.2.  New Unicode Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
     4.3.  The need for exception lists  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
   5.  Proposed/ Alternative Changes to RFC 5892 for the issues



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       first exposed by new code point U+08A1  . . . . . . . . . . .  20
     5.1.  Disallow This New Code Point  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
     5.2.  Disallow This New Code Point and All Future Precomposed
           Additions that Do Not Decompose . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
     5.3.  Disallow the combining sequences for these characters . .  22
     5.4.  Use Combinnig Classes to Develop Additional Contextual
           Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
     5.5.  Disallow all Combining Characters for Specific Scripts  .  23
     5.6.  Do Nothing Other Than Warn  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
     5.7.  Normalization Form IETF (NFI))  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
   6.  Editorial clarification to RFC 5892 . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
   7.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
   9.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30
   Appendix A.  Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
     A.1.  Changes from version -00 (2014-07-21)to -01 . . . . . . .  33
     A.2.  Changes from version -01 (2014-12-07) to -02  . . . . . .  33
     A.3.  Changes from version -02 (2014-12-07) to -03  . . . . . .  33
     A.4.  Changes from version -03 (2015-01-06) to -04  . . . . . .  33
     A.5.  Changes from version -04 (2015-03-11) to -05  . . . . . .  34
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34

1.  Introduction

      Note in/about -04 and -05 Drafts: These two versions of the
      document contains a very large amount of new material as compared
      to the -03 version.  The new material reflects an evolution of
      community understanding in the first quarter of 2015 and further
      evolution between then and mid-2017 from an assumption that the
      problem involved only a few code points and one combining
      character in a single script (Hamza Above and Arabic) to an
      understanding that the problem we have come to call "non-
      decomposing code points" and several closely related ones are
      quite pervasive and may represent fundamental misunderstandings or
      omissions from IDNA2008 (and, by extension, the basics of PRECIS
      [RFC8264]) that must be corrected if those protocols are going to
      be used in a way that supports internationalized identifiers on
      the Internet predictably (as seen by the end user) and securely.

      This version is still necessarily incomplete: not only is our
      understanding probably still not comprehensive, but there are a
      number of placeholders for text and references.  Nonetheless, the
      document in its current form should be useful as both the
      beginning of a comprehensive overview is the issues and a source
      of references to other relevant materials.



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      This draft could almost certainly be better organized to improve
      its readability: specific suggestions would be welcome.

1.1.  Origins and Discovery of the Issue

   The current version of the IDNA specifications, known as "IDNA2008"
   [RFC5890], anticipated that each new version of Unicode would be
   reviewed to verify that no changes had been introduced that required
   adjustments to IDNA's rules and, in particular, whether new
   exceptions or backward compatibility adjustments were needed.  When
   that review was carefully conducted for Unicode 7.0.0 [Unicode7],
   comparing it to prior versions including the text in Unicode 6.2
   [Unicode62], it identified a problematic new code point (U+08A1,
   ARABIC LETTER BEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE).  The code point was added for
   Arabic Script use with the Fula (also known as Fulfulde, Pulaar, amd
   Pular'Fulaare) language.  That language is apparently most often
   written in Latin characters today [Omniglot-Fula] [Dalby] [Daniels].

   The specific problem is discussed in detail in Section 3.  In very
   broad terms, IDNA (and other IETF work) assume that, if one can
   represent "the same character" either as a combining sequence or as a
   single code point, strings that are identical except for those
   alternate forms will compare equal after normalization.  Part of the
   difficulty that has characterized this discussion is that "the same"
   differs depending on the criteria that are chosen.  It may be further
   complicated in practice by differences in preferred type styles or
   rendering, but Unicode code point choices are not supposed to depend
   on type style (font) variations and, again, IDNA has no mechanism for
   specifying language choices that might affect rendering.

   The behavior of the newly-added code point, while non-optimal for
   IDNA, follows that of a few code points that predate Unicode 7.x and
   even the IDNA 2008 specifications and Unicode 6.0.  Those existing
   code points, which may not be easy to accurately characterize as a
   group, make the question of what, if anything, to do about this new
   exceedingly problematic one and, perhaps separately, what to do about
   existing sets of code points with the same behavior, because
   different reasonable criteria yield different decisions,
   specifically:

   o  To disallow it (and future, but not existing, characters with
      similar characteristics) as an IDNA exception case creates
      inconsistencies with how those earlier code points were handled.

   o  To disallow it and the similar code points as well would
      necessitate invalidating some potential labels that would have
      been valid under IDNA2008 until this time.  Depending on how the




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      collection of similar code points is characterized, a few of them
      are almost certainly used in reasonable labels.

   o  To permit the new code point to be treated as PVALID creates a
      situation in which it is possible, within the same script, to
      compose the same character symbol (glyph or grapheme) in two
      different ways that do not compare equal even after normalization.
      That condition would then apply to it and the earlier code points
      with the same behavior.  That situation contradicts a fundamental
      assumption of IDNA that is discussed in more detail below.

   NOTE IN DRAFT:

      This working draft discusses six alternatives, including an idea
      (an IETF-specific normalization form) that seemed too drastic to
      be considered when IDNA2008 was designed or even when the review
      of Unicode 7.0 for IDAN purposes began.  In retrospect, it not
      only would have been appropriate to discuss when the IDNA2008
      specifications were being developed but is appearing more
      attractive now.  The authors suggest that the community discuss
      the relevant tradeoffs and make a decision and that the document
      then be revised to reflect that decision, with the other
      alternatives discussed as options not chosen.  Because there is no
      ideal choice, the discussion of the issues in Section 3 is
      probably as or more important than the particular choice of how to
      handle this code point.  In addition to providing information for
      this document, that section should be considered as an updating
      addendum to RFC 5894 [RFC5894] and should be incorporated into any
      future revision of that document.

      As the result of this version of the document containing several
      alternate proposals, some of the text is also a little bit
      redundant.  That will be corrected in future versions.

1.2.  IDNA2008 and Special or Exceptional Cases

   IDNA2008 contains several type of explicit provisions for characters
   (code points) that require special treatment when the requirements of
   the DNS cannot easily be met by calculations based on stable Unicode
   properties.  Those provisions are
   [[CREF1: ... to be supplied]]

   As anticipated when IDNA2008, and RFC 5892 in particular, were
   written, exceptions and explicit updates are likely to be needed only
   if there is disagreement between the Unicode Consortium's view about
   what is best for the Standard and its very diverse user community and
   the IETF's view of what is best for IDNs, the DNS, and IDNA.  It was
   hoped that a situation would never arise in which the the two



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   perspectives would disagree, but the possibility was anticipated and
   considerable mechanism added to RFC 5890 and 5982 as a result.  It is
   probably important to note that a disagreement in this context does
   not imply that anyone is "wrong", only that the two different groups
   have different needs and therefore criteria about what is acceptable.
   In particular, it appears that the Unicode Consortium has made
   assumptions about the availability (by explicit designation or
   context) of information about applicable languages or other context
   for a give string that are not possible for IDNA.  For that reason,
   the IETF has, in the past, allowed some characters for IDNA that
   active Unicode Technical Committee members suggested be disallowed to
   avoid a change in derived tables [RFC6452].  This document describes
   a set of cases for which the IETF must consider disallowing sets of
   characters that the various properties would otherwise treat as
   PVALID.

   This document provides the "flagging for the IESG" specified by
   Section 5.1 of RFC 5892.  As specified there, the change itself
   requires IETF review because it alters the rules of Section 2 of that
   document.

      [[RFC Editor: please remove the following comment and note if they
      get to you.]]

      [[IESG: It might not be a bad idea to incorporate some version of
      the following into the Last Call announcement.]]

      NOTE IN DRAFT to IETF Reviewers: The issues in this document, and
      particularly the choices among options for either adding exception
      cases to RFC 5892 or ignoring the issue, warning people, and
      hoping the results do not include or enable serious problems, are
      fairly esoteric.  Understanding them requires that one have at
      least some understanding of how scripts in which precomposed
      characters are preferred over combining sequences as a Unicode
      design and extension principle work.  Those scripts include Arabic
      but, unlike the assumption when the issues were first discovered,
      are by no means limited to it.  Readers should also understand the
      reasons the Unicode Standard gives various Arabic Script
      characters a fairly extended discussion [Unicode70-Arabic] but
      should treat that only as an example and note that most other
      cases are much less well documented.  It also requires
      understanding of a number of Unicode principles, including the
      Normalization Stability rules [UAX15-Versioning] as applied to new
      precomposed characters and guidelines for adding new characters.
      There is considerable discussion of the issues in Section 3 and
      references are provided for those who want to pursue them, but
      potential reviewers should assume that the background needed to
      understand the reasons for this change is no less deep in the



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      subject matter than would be expected of someone reviewing a
      proposed change in, e.g., the fundamentals of BGP, TCP congestion
      control, or some cryptographic algorithm.  Put more bluntly, one's
      ability to read or speak languages other than English, or even one
      or more languages that use the Arabic script or other scripts
      similarly affected, does not make one an expert in these matters.

1.3.  Terminology

   This document assumes that the reader is reasonably familiar with the
   terminology of IDNA [RFC5890] and Unicode [Unicode7] and with the
   IETF conventions for representing Unicode code points [RFC5137].
   Some terms used here may not be used in the same way in those two
   sets of documents.  From one point of view, those differences may
   have been the results of, or led to, misunderstandings that may, in
   turn, be part of the root cause of the problems explored in this
   document.  In particular, this document uses the term "precomposed
   character" to describe characters that could reasonably be composed
   by a combining sequence using code points with appropriate appearance
   in common type styles but for which a single code point that does not
   require combining sequences is available.  That definition is
   strictly about mechanical composition and does not involve any
   considerations about how the character is used.  It is closely
   related to this document's definition of "identical".  When a
   precomposed character exists and either applying NFC to the combining
   sequence does not yield that character or applying NFD to that
   character's code point does not yield the combining sequence, it is
   referred to in this document as "non-decomposable".

   The document also uses some terms that are familiar to those who have
   been involved with IDNs and IDNA for a long time, but uses them more
   precisely than may be common in other quarters.  For example, the
   term "Punycode" is not used at all in the rest of this document
   because it is the name of a very specific encoding algorithm
   [RFC3492] that does not incorporate the rules and algorithms for
   domain name labels that are produced by that encoding.  Instead, the
   generic terms "ACE" or "ACE string" for "ASCII-compatible encoding"
   is used to refer to strings that abstractly contain characters
   outside the ASCII repertoire [RFC0020] but are encoded so that only
   ASCII characters appear in the string that would be encountered by a
   user or protocol and the terms "A-label" and "U-label", as defined in
   RFC 5890, to refer to the ACE and more conventional (or "native")
   character forms in which those non-ASCII characters appear in
   conventional Unicode encodings (typically UTF-8).







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2.  Document Aspirations

   This document, in its present form, is not a proposal for a solution.
   Instead, it is intended to be (or evolve into) a comprehensive
   description of the issues and problems and to outline some possible
   approaches to a solution.  A perfect solution -- one that would
   resolve all of the issues identified in this document -- would
   involve a relatively small set of relatively simple rules and hence
   would be comprehensible and predictable for and by non-expert end
   users, would not require code point by code point or even block by
   block exception lists, and would not leave uses of any script or
   language feeling that their particular writing system have been
   treated less fairly than others.

   Part of the reality we need to accept is that IDNA, in its present
   form, represents compromises that does not completely satisfy those
   criteria and whatever is done about these issues will probably make
   it (or the job of administering zones containing IDNs) more complex.
   Similarly, as the Unicode Standard suggests when it identifies ten
   Design Principles and the text then says "Not all of these principles
   can be satisfied simultaneously..." [Unicode70-Design], while there
   are guidelines and principles, a certain amount of subjective
   judgment is involved in making determinations about normalization,
   decomposition, and some property values.  For Unicode itself, those
   issues are resolved by multiple statements (at least one cited below)
   that one needs to rely on per-code point information in the Unicode
   Character Database rather than on rules or principles.  The design of
   IDNA and the effort to keep it largely independent of Unicode
   versions requires rules, categories, and principles that can be
   relied upon and applied algorithmically.  There is obviously some
   tension between the two approaches.

3.  Problem Description

3.1.  IDNA assumptions about Unicode normalization

   IDNA makes several assumptions about Unicode, Unicode "characters",
   and the effects of normalization.  Those assumptions were based on
   careful reading of the Unicode Standard at the time [Unicode5],
   guided by advice and commitments by members of the Unicode Technical
   Committee.  Those assumptions, and the associated requirements, are
   necessitated by three properties of DNS labels that typically do not
   apply to blocks of running text:

   1.  There is no language context for a label.  While particular DNS
       zones may impose restrictions, including language or script
       restrictions, on what labels can be registered, neither the DNS
       nor IDNA impose either type of restriction or give the user of a



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       label any indication about the registration or other restrictions
       that may have been imposed.

   2.  Labels are often mnemonics rather than words in any language.
       They may be abbreviations or acronyms or contain embedded digits
       and have other characteristics that are not typical of words.

   3.  Labels are, in practice, usually short.  Even when they are the
       maximum length allowed by the DNS and IDNA, they are typically
       too short to provide significant context.  Statements that
       suggest that languages can almost always be determined from
       relatively short paragraphs or equivalent bodies of text do not
       apply to DNS labels because of their typical short length and
       because, as noted above, they are not required to be formed
       according to language-based rules.

   At the same time, because the DNS is an exact-match system, there
   must be no ambiguity about whether two labels are equal.  Although
   there have been extensive discussions about "confusingly similar"
   characters, labels, and strings, such tests between scripts are
   always somewhat subjective: they are affected by choices of type
   styles and by what the user expects to see.  In spite of the fact
   that the glyphs that represent many characters in different scripts
   are identical in appearance (e.g., basic Latin "a" (U+0061) and the
   identical-appearing Cyrillic character (U+0430), the most important
   test is that, if two glyphs are the same within a given script, they
   must represent the same character no matter how they are formed.

   Unicode normalization, as explained in [UAX15], is expected to
   resolve those "same script, same glyph, different formation methods"
   issues.  Within the Latin script, the code point sequence for lower
   case "o" (U+006F) and combining diaeresis (U+0308) will, when
   normalized using the "NFC" method required by IDNA, produce the
   precomposed small letter o with diaeresis (U+00F6) and hence the two
   ways of forming the character will compare equal (and the combining
   sequence is effectively prohibited from U-labels).

   NFC was preferred over other normalization methods for IDNA because
   it is more compact, more likely to be produced on keyboards on which
   the relevant characters actually appeared, and because it does not
   lose substantive information (e.g., some types of compatibility
   equivalence involves judgment calls as to whether two characters are
   actually the same -- they may be "the same" in some contexts but not
   others -- while canonical equivalence is about different ways to
   produce the glyph for the same abstract character).

   IDNA also assumed that the extensive Unicode stability rules would be
   applied and work as specified when new code points were added.  Those



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   rules, as described in The Unicode Standard and the normative annexes
   identified below, provide that:

   1.  New code points representing precomposed characters that can be
       formed from combining sequences will not be added to Unicode
       unless neither the relevant base character nor required combining
       character(s) are part of the Standard within the relevant script
       [UAX15-Versioning].

   2.  If circumstances require that principle be violated,
       normalization stability requires that the newly-added character
       decompose (even under NFC) to the previously-available combining
       sequence [UAX15-Exclusion].

   At least at the time IDNA2008 was being developed, there was no
   explicit provision in the Standard's discussion of conditions for
   adding new code points, nor of normalization stability, for an
   exception based on different languages using the same script or
   ambiguities about the shape or positioning of combining characters.

3.2.  The discovery and the Arabic script cases

   While the set of problems with normalization discussed above were
   discovered with a newly-added code point for the Arabic Script and
   some characteristics of Unicode handling of that script seem to make
   the problem more complex going forward, these are not issues specific
   to Arabic.  This section describes the Arabic-specific problems;
   subsequent ones (starting with Section 3.3) discuss the problem more
   generally and include illustrations from other scripts.

3.2.1.  New code point U+08A1, decomposition, and language dependency

   Unicode 7.0.0 introduces the new code point U+08A1, ARABIC LETTER BEH
   WITH HAMZA ABOVE.  As can be deduced from the name, it is visually
   identical to the glyph that can be formed from a combining sequence
   consisting of the code point for ARABIC LETTER BEH (U+0628) and the
   code point for Combining Hamza Above (U+0654).  The two rules
   summarized above (see the last part of Section 3.1) suggest that
   either the new code point should not be allocated at all or that it
   should have a decomposition to \u'0628'\u'0654'.

   Had the issues outlined in this document been better understood at
   the time, it probably would have been wise for RFC 5892 to disallow
   either the precomposed character or the combining sequence of each
   pair in those cases in which Unicode normalization rules do not cause
   the right thing to happen, i.e., the combining sequence and
   precomposed character to be treated as equivalent.  Failure to do so
   at the time places an extra burden on registries to be sure that



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   conflicts (and the potential for confusion and attacks) do not exist.
   Oddly, had the exclusion been made part of the specification at that
   time, the preference for precomposed forms noted above would probably
   have dictated excluding the combining sequence, something not
   otherwise done in IDNA2008 because the NFC requirement serves the
   same purpose.  Today, the only thing that can be excluded without the
   potential disruption of disallowing a previously-PVALID combining
   sequence is the to exclude the newly-added code point so whatever is
   done, or might have been contemplated with hindsight, will be
   somewhat inconsistent.

3.2.2.  Other examples of the same behavior within the Arabic Script

   One of the things that complicates the issue with the new U+08A1 code
   point is that there are several other Arabic-script code points that
   behave in the same way for similar language-specific reasons.

   In particular, at least three other grapheme clusters that have been
   present for many version of Unicode can be seen as involving issues
   similar to those for the newly-added ARABIC LETTER BEH WITH HAMZA
   ABOVE.  ARABIC LETTER HAH WITH HAMZA ABOVE (U+0681) and ARABIC LETTER
   REH WITH HAMZA ABOVE (U+076C) do not have decomposition forms and are
   preferred over combining sequences using HAMZA ABOVE (U+0654)
   [Unicode70-Hamza].  By contrast, ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH HAMZA ABOVE
   (U+0623) decomposes into \u'0627'\u'0654', ARABIC LETTER WAW WITH
   HAMZA ABOVE (U+0624) decomposes into \u'0648'\u'0654', and ARABIC
   LETTER YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE (U+0626) decomposes into \u'064A'\u'0654'
   so the precomposed character and combining sequences compare equal
   when both are normalized, as this specification prefers.

   There are other variations in which a precomposed character involving
   HAMZA ABOVE has a decomposition to a combining sequence that can form
   it.  For example, ARABIC LETTER U WITH HAMZA ABOVE (U+0677) has a
   compatibility decomposition. but not a canonical one, into the
   combining sequence \u'06C7'\u'0674'.

3.2.3.  Hamza and Combining Sequences

   As the Unicode Standard points out at some length [Unicode70-Arabic],
   Hamza is a problematic abstract character and the "Hamza Above"
   construction even more so [Unicode70-Hamza].  Those sections explain
   a distinction made by Unicode between the use of a Hamza mark to
   denote a glottal stop and one used as a diacritic mark to denote a
   separate letter.  In the first case, the combining sequence is used.
   In the second, a precomposed character is assigned.

   Unlike Unicode generally and because of concerns about identifier
   spoofing and attacks based on similarities, character distinctions in



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   IDNA are based much more strictly on the appearance of characters;
   language and pronunciation distinctions within a script are not
   considered.  So, for IDNA, BEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE is not-quite-
   tautologically the same as BEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE, even if one of them
   is written as U+08A1 (new to Unicode 7.0.0) and the other as the
   sequence \u'0628'\u'0654' (feasible with Unicode 7.0.0 but also
   available in versions of Unicode going back at least to the version
   [Unicode32] used in the original version of IDNA [RFC3490].  Because
   the precomposed form and combining sequence are, for IDNA purposes,
   the same, IDNA expects that normalization (specifically the
   requirement that all U-labels be in NFC form) will cause them to
   compare equal.

   If Unicode also considered them the same, then the principle would
   apply that new precomposed ("composition") forms are not added unless
   one of the code points that could be used to construct it did not
   exist in an earlier version (and even then is discouraged)
   [UAX15-Versioning].  When exceptions are made, they are expected to
   conform to the rules and classes in the "Composition Exclusion
   Table", with class 2 being relevant to this case [UAX15-Exclusion].
   That rule essentially requires that the normalization for the old
   combining sequence to itself be retained (for stability) but that the
   newly-added character be treated as canonically decomposable and
   decompose back to the older sequence even under NFC.  That was not
   done for this particular case, presumably because of the distinction
   about pronunciation modifiers versus separate letters noted above.
   Because, for IDNA and the DNS, there is a possibility that the
   composing sequence \u'0628'\u'0654' already appears in labels, the
   only choice other than allowing an otherwise-identical, and
   identically-appearing, label with U+08A1 substituted to identify a
   different DNS entry is to DISALLOW the new character.

3.3.  Precomposed characters without decompositions more generally

3.3.1.  Description of the general problem

   As mentioned above, IDNA made a strong assumption that, if there were
   two ways to form the same abstract character in the same script,
   normalization would result in them comparing equal.  Work on IDNA2008
   recognized that early version of Unicode might also contain some
   inconsistencies; see Section 3.3.2.3.2 below.

   Having precomposed code points exist that don't have decompositions,
   or having code points of that nature allocated in the future, is
   problematic for those IDNA assumptions about character comparison.
   It seems to call for either excluding some set of code points that
   IDNA's rules do not now identify, development and use of a
   normalization procedure that behaves as expected (those two options



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   may be nearly equivalent for many purposes), or deciding to accept a
   risk that, apparently, will only increase over time.

   It is not clear whether the reasons the IDNABIS WG did not understand
   and allow for these cases are important except insofar as they inform
   considerations about what to do in the future.  It seemed (and still
   seems to some people) that the Unicode Standard is very clear on the
   matter (or at least was when IDNA2008 was being developed).  In
   addition to the normalization stability rules cited in the last part
   of Section 3.1. the discussion in the Core Standard seems quite
   clear.  For example, "Where characters are used in different ways in
   different languages, the relevant properties are normally defined
   outside the Unicode Standard" in Section 2.2, subsection titled
   "Semantics" [Unicode7] did not suggest to most readers that sometimes
   separate code points would be allocated within a script based on
   language considerations.  Similarly, the same section of the Standard
   says, in a subsection titled "Unification", "The Unicode Standard
   avoids duplicate encoding of characters by unifying them within
   scripts across language" and does not list exceptions to that rule or
   limit it to a single script although it goes on to list "CJK" as an
   example.  Another subsection, "Equivalent Sequences" indicates
   "Common precomposed forms ... are included for compatibility with
   current standards.  For static precomposed forms, the standard
   provides a mapping to an equivalent dynamically composed sequence of
   characters".  The latter appears to be precisely the "all precomposed
   characters decompose into the relevant combining sequences if the
   relevant base and combining characters exist in the Standard" rule
   that IDNA needs and assumed and, again, there is no mention of
   exceptions, language-dependent of otherwise.  The summary of
   stability policies cited in the Standard [Unicode70-Stability] does
   not appear to shed any additional light on these issues.

   The Standard now contains a subsection titled "Non-decomposition of
   Overlaid Diacritics" [Unicode70-Overlay] that identifies a list of
   diacritics that do not normally form characters that have
   decompositions.  The rule given has its own exceptions and the text
   clearly states that there is actually no way to know whether a code
   point has a decomposition other than consulting the Unicode Character
   Database entry for that code point.  The subsequent section notes
   that this can be a security problem.  While the issues with IDNA go
   well beyond what is normally considered security, that comment now
   seems clear.  While that subsection is helpful in explaining the
   problem, especially for European scripts, it does not appear in the
   Unicode versions that were current when IDNA2008 was being developed.







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3.3.2.  Latin Examples and Cases

   While this set of problems was discovered because of a code point
   added to the Arabic script in precombined form to support a
   particular language, there are actually far more examples for, e.g.,
   Latin script than there are for Arabic script.  Many of them are
   associated with the "non-decomposition of combining diacriticals"
   issues mentioned above, but the next subsections describe other cases
   that are not directly bound to decomposition.

3.3.2.1.  The font exclusion and compatability relationships

   Unicode contains a large collection of characters that are identified
   as "Mathematical Symbols".  A large subset of them are basic or
   decorated Latin characters, differing from the ordinary ones only by
   their usage and, in appearance, by font or type styling (despite the
   general principle that font distinctions are not used as the basis
   for assigning separate code points.  Most of these have canonical
   mappings to the base form, which eliminates them from IDNA, but
   others do not and, because the same marks that are used as phonetic
   diacritical markings in conventional alphabetical use have special
   mathematical meanings, applications that permit the use of these
   characters have their own issues with normalization and equality.

3.3.2.2.  The phonetic notation characters and extensions

   Another example involves various Phonetic Alphabet and Extension
   characters. many of which, unlike the Mathematical ones, do not have
   normalizations that would make them compare equal to the basic
   characters with essentially identical representations.  This would
   not be a problem for IDNA if they were identified with a specialized
   script or as symbols rather than letters, but neither is the case:
   they are generally identified as lower case Latin Script letters even
   when they are visually upper-case, another issue for IDNA.

3.3.2.3.  The stroke (solidus) ambiguity

   Some combining characters have two or more forms.  for example, in
   the case of the character popularly known as "slash", "stroke", or
   "solidus" (sometime prefixed by "forward"), there are "short" and
   "long" combining forms, U+0337 (COMBINING SHORT SOLIDUS OVERLAY) and
   U+0338 (COMBINING LONG SOLIDUS OVERLAY).  It is not clear how long a
   short one needs to be to make it "long" or how short a long one needs
   to be to make it "short".  Perhaps for that reason, U+00F8 has no
   decomposition and neither U+006F U+0337 nor U+006F U+0338 combine to
   it with NFC.





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   Adding to the confusion, at least when one attempts to use Unicode
   character names to identify places to look for problems, U+00F8 is
   formally called LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH STROKE but, in combining
   character terminology, the term "stroke" refers to a horizontal bar,
   not an angled one, as in U+0335 and U+0336 (also short and long
   versions).  However, when one overlays one of those on an "o"
   (U+006F), one gets U+0275, LATIN SMALL LETTER BARRED O, not "...o
   with stroke".  That character, by the way, does not decompose either.
   This does illustrate the principle that it is not feasible to rely on
   Unicode code point names to identify confusable character sequences,
   even ones that produce the same, more or less font-independent,
   grapheme clusters.

3.3.2.3.1.  Combining dots and other shapes combine... unless...

   The discussion of "Non-decomposition of Overlaid Diacritics"
   [Unicode70-Overlay] indirectly exhibits at least one reason why it
   has been difficult to characterize the problem.  If one combines that
   subsection with others, one gets a set of rules that might be
   described as:

   1.  If the precomposed character and the code points that make up the
       combining sequence exist, then canonical composition and
       decomposition work as expected, except...

   2.  If the precomposed character was added to Unicode after the code
       points that make up the combining sequence, normalization
       stability for the combining sequences requires that NFC applied
       to the precomposed character decomposes rather than having the
       combining sequence compose to the new character, however...

   3.  If the combining sequence involves a diacritic or other mark that
       actually touches the base character when composed, the
       precomposed character does not have a decomposition, unless...

   4.  The combining diacritic involved is Cedilla (U+0327), Ogonek
       (U+0328), or Horn (U+031B), in which case the precomposed
       characters that contain them "regularly" (but presumably not
       always) decomposes, and...

   5.  There are further exceptions for Hamza which does not overlay the
       associated base character in the same way the Latin-derived
       combining diacritics and other marks do.  Those decisions to
       decompose a precomposed character (or not) are based on language
       or phonetic considerations, not the combining mechanism or
       appearance, or perhaps,...





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   6.  Some characters have compatibility decompositions rather than
       canonical ones [Unicode70-CompatDecomp].  Because compatibility
       relationships are treated differently by IDNA, PRECIS [RFC8264],
       and, potentially, other protocols involving identifiers for
       Internet use, the existence of compatibility relationship may or
       may not be helpful.  Finally,...

   7.  There is no reason to believe the above list is complete.  In
       particular, if whether a precomposed character decomposes or not
       is determined by language or phonetic distinctions or by a
       decision that all new characters for some scripts will be
       precomposed while new ones for others will be added (if needed)
       as combining sequences, one may need additional rules on a per-
       script and/or per-character basis.

   The above list only covers the cases involving combining sequences.
   It does not cover cases such as those in Section 3.3.2.1 and
   Section 3.3.2.2 and there may be additional groups of cases not yet
   identified.

3.3.2.3.2.  "Legacy" characters and new additions

   The development of categories and rules for IDNA recognized that
   early version of Unicode might contain some inconsistencies if
   evaluated using more contemporary rules about code point assignments
   and stability.  In particular, there might be some exceptions from
   different practices in early version of Unicode or anomalies caused
   by copying existing single- or dual-script standards into Unicode as
   block rather than individual character additions to the repertoire.
   The possibility of such "legacy" exceptions was one reason why the
   IDNA category rules include explicit provisions for exception lists
   (even though no such code points were identified prior to 2014).

3.3.3.  Unexpected Combining Sequances

   Most combining characters have the script property "Inherited" or
   "Common", i.e., are not members of any particular script and will not
   cause rules against mixed-script labels to be triggered.
   Normalization rules are generally structured around the base
   character, so unexpected combinations of base characters with
   combining ones may lead to cases where normalization might normally
   be expected to produce a precombined character but does not do so (in
   the most common situation because no such precombined character
   exists.  For example, the Latin script characters "a" and "a with
   acute accent" are both coded (as U+0061 and U+00E1).  If the latter
   is coded as the combining sequence U+0061 U+0301, NFC will turn that
   sequence into U+00E1 and everything will work as users expect.
   However, the Cyrillic "a" character (U+0430) is notoriously similar



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   in appearance in most type styles to U+0061 and the U+0439 U+0301 and
   that sequence does not normalize to anything else.  Because thre is
   no code point assigned for Cyrillic small letter a with acute accent
   and unlike many of the other examples in this document, that is
   Unicode working exactly as would be expected.  Whether it is an issue
   or not depends on the questions that are being asked and what rules
   are being applied.

3.3.4.  Examples and Cases from Other Scripts

   Research into these issues has not yet turned up a comprehensive list
   of affected scripts and code points.  As discussed elsewhere in this
   document, it is clear that Arabic and Latin Scripts are significantly
   affected, that some Han and Kangxu radicals and ideographs are
   affected, and that other examples do exist -- it is just not known
   how many of those examples there are and what patterns, if any,
   characterize them.

3.3.4.1.  Scripts with precomposed preferences and ones with combining
          preferences

   While the authors have been unable to find an explanation for the
   differentiation in the Unicode Standard, we have been told that there
   are differences among scripts as to whether the action preference is
   to add new combining sequences only (and resist adding precomposed
   characters) as suggested in Section 3.3.2.3.1 or to add precomposed
   characters, often ones that do not have decompositions.  If those
   difference in preference do exist, it is probably important to have
   them documented so that they can be reflected in IDNA review
   procedures and elsewhere.  It will also require IETF discussion of
   whether combining sequences should be deprecated when the
   corresponding precomposed characters are added or to disallow
   combining sequences entirely for those scripts (as has been
   implicitly suggested for Arabic language use [RFC5564]).

   [[CREF2: The above isn't quite right and probably needs additional
   discussion and text.]]

3.3.4.2.  The Han and Kangxu Cases

   [[CREF3: .. to be supplied .. ]]

3.4.  Confusion and the Casual User

   To the extent to which predictability for relatively casual users is
   a desired and important feather of relevant application or
   application support protocols, it is probably worth observing that
   the complex of rules and cases suggested or implied above is almost



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   certainly too involved for the typical such user to develop a good
   intuitive understanding of how things behave and what relationships
   exist.  Conversely, the nature of writing systems for natural
   languages, especially those that have evolved and diverged over
   centuries, implies that no set of rules about allowable characters
   will guarantee complete safety (however that is defined).

4.  Implementation options and issues: Unicode properties, exceptions,
    and the nature of stability

4.1.  Unicode Stability compared to IETF (and ICANN) Stability

   The various stability rules in Unicode [Unicode70-Stability] all
   appear to be based on the model that once a value is assigned, it can
   never be changed.  That is probably appropriate for a character
   coding system with multiple uses and applications.  It is probably
   the only option when normative relationships are expressed in tables
   of values rather than by rules.  One consequence of such a model is
   that it is difficult or impossible to fix mistakes (for some
   stability rules, the Unicode Standard does provide for exceptions)
   and even harder to make adjustments that would normally be dictated
   by evolution.

   "No changes" provides a very strong and predictable type of
   stability.  There are many reasons to take that path.  As in some of
   the cases that motivated this document, the difficulty is that simply
   adding new code points (in Unicode) or features (in a protocol or
   application) may be destabilizing.  One then has complete stability
   for systems that never use or allow the new code points or features,
   but rough edges for newer systems that see the discrepancies and
   rough edges.  IDNA2003 (inadvertently) took that approach by freezing
   on Unicode 3.2 -- if no code points added after Unicode 3.2 had ever
   been allowed, we would have had complete stability even as Unicode
   libraries changed.  Unicode has been quite ingenious about working
   around those difficulties with such provisions as having code points
   for newly-added precomposed characters decompose rather than altering
   the normalization for the combining sequences.  Other cases, such as
   newly-added precomposed characters that do not decompose for, e.g.,
   language or phonetic reasons, are more problematic.

   The IETF (and ICANN and standards development bodies such as ISO and
   ISO/IEC JTC1) have generally adopted a different type of stability
   model, one which considers experience in use and the ill effects of
   not making changes as well as the disruptive effects of doing so.  In
   the IETF model, if an earlier decision is causing sufficient harm and
   there is consensus in the communities that are most affected that a
   change is desirable enough to make transition costs acceptable, then
   the change is made.



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   The difference and its implications are perhaps best illustrated by a
   disagreement when IDNA2008 was being approved.  IDNA2003 had
   effectively prevented some characters, notably (measured by intensity
   of the protests) the Sharp S character (U+00DF) from being used in
   DNS labels by mapping them to other characters before conversion to
   ACE form.  It has also prohibited some other code points, notably ZWJ
   (U+200D) and ZWNJ (U+200C), by discarding them.  In both cases, there
   were strong voices from the relevant language communities, supported
   by the registry communities, that the characters were important
   enough that it was more desirable to undergo the short-term pain of a
   transition and some uncertainty than to continue to exclude those
   characters and the IDNA2008 rules and repertoire are consistent with
   that preference.  The Unicode Consortium apparently believed that
   stability --elimination of any possibility of label invalidation or
   different interpretations of the same string-- was more important
   than those writing system requirements and community preferences.
   That view was expressed through what was effectively a fork in (or
   attempt to nullify) the IETF Standard [UTS46] a result that has
   probably been worse for the overall Internet than either of the
   possible decision choices.

4.2.  New Unicode Properties

   One suggestion about the way out of these problems would be to create
   one or more new Unicode properties, maintained along with the rest of
   Unicode, and then incorporated into new or modified rules or
   categories in IDNA.  Given the analysis in this document, it appears
   that that property (or properties) would need to provide:

   1.  Identification of combining characters that, when used in
       combining sequences, do not produce decomposable characters.
       [[CREF4: Wording on the above is not quite right but, for the
       present, maybe the intent is clear.]]

   2.  Identification of precomposed characters that might reasonably be
       expected to decompose, but that do not.

   3.  Identification of character forms that are distinct only because
       of language or phonetic distinctions within a script.

   4.  Identification of scripts for which precomposed forms are
       strongly preferred and combining sequences should either be
       viewed as temporary mechanisms until precomposed characters are
       assigned or banned entirely.

   5.  Identification of code points that represent symbols for
       specific, non-language, purposes even if identified as letters or
       numerals by their General Property.  This would include all



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       characters given separate code points because of specialized
       "mathematical" and "phonetic" characters (see Section 3.3.2.2 and
       Section 3.3.2.1), but there are probably additional cases.

   Some of these properties (or characteristics or values of a single
   property) would be suitable for disallowing characters, code points,
   or contextual sequences that otherwise might be allowed by IDNA.
   Others would be more suitable for making equality comparisons come
   out as needed by IDNA, particularly to eliminate distinctions based
   on language context.

   While it would appear that appropriate rules and categories could be
   developed for IDNA (and, presumably, for PRECIS, etc.) if the problem
   areas are those identified in this document, it is not yet known
   whether the list is complete (and, hence, whether additional
   properties or information would be needed).

   Even with such properties, IDNA would still almost certainly need
   exception lists.  In addition, it is likely that stability rules for
   those properties would need to reflect IETF norms with arrangements
   for bringing the IETF and other communities into the discussion when
   tradeoffs are reviewed.

4.3.  The need for exception lists

   [[CREF5: Note in draft: this section is a partial placeholder and may
   need more elaboration.]]
   Issues with exception lists and the requirements for them are
   discussed in Section 2 above and in RFC 5894 [RFC5894].

5.  Proposed/ Alternative Changes to RFC 5892 for the issues first
    exposed by new code point U+08A1

   NOTE IN DRAFT: See the comments in the Introduction, Section 1 and
   the first paragraph of each Subsection below for the status of the
   Subsections that follow.  Each one, in combination with the material
   in Section 3 above, also provides information about the reasons why
   that particular strategy might or might not be appropriate.

   When the term "Category" followed by an upper-case letter appears
   below, it is s reference to a rule in RFC 5892.

5.1.  Disallow This New Code Point

   This option is almost certainly too Arabic-specific and does not
   solve, or even address, the underlying problem.  It also does not
   inherently generalize to non-decomposing precomposed code points that
   might be added in the future (whether to Arabic or other scripts)



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   even though one could add more code points to Category F in the same
   way.

   If chosen by the community, this subsection would update the portion
   of the IDNA2008 specification that identifies rules for what
   characters are permitted [RFC5892] to disallow that code point.

   With the publication of this document, Section 2.6 ("Exceptions (F)")
   of RFC 5892 [RFC5892] is updated by adding 08A1 to the rule in
   Category F so that the rule itself reads:

      F: cp is in {00B7, 00DF, 0375, 03C2, 05F3, 05F4, 0640, 0660,
                   0661, 0662, 0663, 0664, 0665, 0666, 0667, 0668,
                   0669, 06F0, 06F1, 06F2, 06F3, 06F4, 06F5, 06F6,
                   06F7, 06F8, 06F9, 06FD, 06FE, 07FA, 08A1, 0F0B,
                   3007, 302E, 302F, 3031, 3032, 3033, 3034, 3035,
                   303B, 30FB}

   and then add to the subtable designated
   "DISALLOWED -- Would otherwise have been PVALID"
   after the line that begins "07FA", the additional line:

      08A1; DISALLOWED # ARABIC LETTER BEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE

   This has the effect of making the cited code point DISALLOWED
   independent of application of the rest of the IDNA rule set to the
   current version of Unicode.  Those wishing to create domain name
   labels containing Beh with Hamza Above may continue to use the
   sequence

      U+0628, ARABIC LETTER BEH
      followed by

      U+0654, ARABIC HAMZA ABOVE

   which was valid for IDNA purposes in Unicode 5.0 and earlier and
   which continues to be valid.

   In principle, much the same thing could be accomplished by using the
   IDNA "BackwardCompatible" category (IDNA Category G, RFC 5892
   Section 5.3).  However, that category is described as applying only
   when "property values in versions of Unicode after 5.2 have changed
   in such a way that the derived property value would no longer be
   PVALID or DISALLOWED".  Because U+08A1 is a newly-added code point in
   Unicode 7.0.0 and no property values of code points in prior versions
   have changed, category G does not apply.  If that section of RFC 5892
   were to be replaced in the future, perhaps consideration should be




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   given to adding Normalization Stability and other issues to that
   description but, at present, it is not relevant.

5.2.  Disallow This New Code Point and All Future Precomposed Additions
      that Do Not Decompose

   At least in principle, the approach suggested above (Section 5.1)
   could be expanded to disallow all future allocations of non-
   decomposing precomposed characters.  This would probably require
   either a new Unicode property to identify such characters and/or more
   emphasis on the manual, individual code point, checking of the new
   Unicode version review proces (i.e,. not just application of the
   existing rules and algorithm).  It might require either a new rule in
   IDNA or a modification to the structure of Category F to make
   additions less tedious.  It would do nothing for different ways to
   form identical characters within the same script that were not
   associated with decomposition and so would have to be used in
   conjunction with other appropaches.  Finally, for scripts (such as
   Arabic) where there is a very strong preference to avoid combining
   sequences, this approach would exclude exactly the wrong set of
   characters.

5.3.  Disallow the combining sequences for these characters

   As in the approach discussed in Section 5.1, this approach is too
   Arabic-specific to address the more general problem.  However, it
   illustrates a single-script approach and a possible mechanism for
   excluding combining sequences whose handling is connected to language
   information (information that, as discussed above, is not relevant to
   the DNS).

   If chosen by the community, this subsection would update the portion
   of the IDNA2008 specification that identifies contextual rules
   [RFC5892] to prohibit (combining) Hamza Above (U+0654) in conjunction
   with Arabic BEH (U+0628), HAH (U+062D), and REH (U+0631).  Note that
   the choice of this option is consistent with the general preference
   for precomposed characters discussed above but would ban some labels
   that are valid today and that might, in principle, be in use.

   The required prohibition could be imposed by creating a new
   contextual rule in RFC 5892 to constrain combining sequences
   containing Hamza Above.

   As the Unicode Standard points out at some length [Unicode70-Arabic],
   Hamza is a problematic abstract character and the "Hamza Above"
   construction even more so.  IDNA has historically associated
   characters whose use is reasonable in some contexts but not others
   with the special derived property "CONTEXTO" and then specified



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   specific, context-dependent, rules about where they may be used.
   Because Hamza Above is problematic (and spawns edge cases, as
   discussed in the Unicode Standard section cited above), it was
   suggested that a contextual rule might be appropriate.  There are at
   least two reasons why a contextual rule would not be suitable for the
   present situation.

   1.  As discussed above, the present situation is a normalization
       stability and predictability problem, not a contextual one.  Had
       the same issues arisen with a newly-added precomposed character
       that could previously be constructed from non-problematic base
       and combining characters, it would be even more clearly a
       normalization issue and, following the principles discussed there
       and particularly in UAX 15 [UAX15-Exclusion], might not have been
       assigned at all.

   2.  The contextual rule sets are designed around restricting the use
       of code points to a particular script or adjacent to particular
       characters within that script.  Neither of these cases applies to
       the newly-added character even if one could imagine rules for the
       use of Hamza Above (U+0654) that would reflect the considerations
       of Chapter 8 of Unicode 6.2.  Even had the latter been desired,
       it would be somewhat late now -- Hamza Above has been present as
       a combining character (U+0654) in many versions of Unicode.
       While that section of the Unicode Standard describes the issues,
       it does not provide actionable guidance about what to do about it
       for cases going forward or when visual identity is important.

5.4.  Use Combinnig Classes to Develop Additional Contextual Rules

   This option may not be of any practical use, but Unicode supports a
   property called "Combining_Class".  That property has been used in
   IDNA only to construct a contextual rule for Zero-Width Non-Joiner
   [RFC5892, Appendix A.1] but speculation has arisen during discussions
   of work on Arabic combining characters and rendering [UTR53] as to
   whether Combining Classes could be used to build additional
   contextual rules that would restrict problematic cases.  Unless such
   rules were applied only to new code points, they would also not be
   backward compatable.

   The question of whether Combining Classes could be used to reduce the
   number of problematic labels is at least worth examination.

5.5.  Disallow all Combining Characters for Specific Scripts

   [[CREF6: This subsection needs to be turned into prose, but the
   follow bullet points are probably sufficient to identify the
   issues.]]



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   o  Might work for Arabic and other "precomposed preference" scripts
      if those can be identified in an orderly and stable way (see
      Section 3.3.4.1; recommended by the Arabic language community for
      IDNs [RFC5564]).

   o  Unworkable for Latin because many characters that do not decompose
      are, at least in part, historical accidents resulting from
      combining prior national standards (this probably may exist for
      other scripts as well).

   o  No effect at all on special-use representations of identical
      characters within a script (see Section 3.3.2.1 and
      Section 3.3.2.2).

   o  Not backwards compatible.

5.6.  Do Nothing Other Than Warn

   A recommendation from UTC and others has been to simply warn
   registries, at all levels of the tree, to be careful with this set of
   characters.  Doing that well would probably require making language
   distinctions within zones, which would violate the important IDNA
   principles that labels are not necessarily "words", do not carry
   language information, and may, at the protocol level, even
   deliberately mix languages and scripts.  It is also problematic
   because the relevant set of characters is not easily defined in a
   precise way.  This suggestion is problematic because the DNS and IDNA
   cannot make or enforce language distinctions, but it would avoid
   having the IETF either invalidate label strings that are potentially
   now in use or creating inconsistencies among the characters that
   combine with selected base characters but that also have precomposed
   forms that do not have decompositions.  The potential would still
   exist for registries to respect the warning and deprecate such labels
   if they existed.

   More generally, while there are already requirements in IDNA for
   registries to be knowledgeable and responsible about the labels they
   register (a separate document discusses that requirement
   [Klensin-rfc5891bis]), experience indicates that those requirements
   are often ignored.  At least as important, warning registries about
   what should or should not be registered and even calling out specific
   code points as dangerous and in need of extra attention
   [Freytag-dangerous] does nothing to address the many cases in which
   lookup-time checking for IDNA conformance and deliberately misleading
   label constructions is important.






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5.7.  Normalization Form IETF (NFI))

   The most radical possibility for the comparison issue would be to
   decide that none of the Unicode Normalization Forms specified in UAX
   15 [UAX15] are adequate for use with the DNS because, contrary to
   their apparent descriptions, normalization tables are actually
   determined using language information.  However, use of language
   information is unacceptable for IDNA for reasons described elsewhere
   in this document.  The remedy would be to define an IETF-specific (or
   DNS-specific) normalization form (sometimes called "NFI" in
   discussions), building on NFC but adhering strictly to the rule that
   normalization causes two different forms of the same character (glyph
   image) within the same script to be treated as equal.  In practice
   such a form could be implemented for IDNA purposes as an additional
   rule within RFC 5892 (and its successors) that constituted an
   exception list for the NFC tables.  For this set of characters, the
   special IETF normalization form would be equivalent to the exclusion
   discussed in Section 5.3 above.

   An Internet-identifier-specific normalization form, especially if
   specified somewhat separately from the IDNA core, would have a small
   marginal advantage over the other strategies in this section (or in
   combination with some of them), even though most of the end result
   and much of the implementation would be the same in practice.  While
   the design of IDNA requires that strings be normalized as part of the
   process of determining label validity (and hence before either
   storage of values in the DNS or name resolution), there is an ongoing
   debate about whether normalization should be performed before storing
   a string or putting it on the wire or only when the string is
   actually compared or otherwise used.

   If a normalization procedure with the right properties for the IETF
   was defined, that argument could be bypassed and the best decisions
   made for different circumstances.  The separation would also allow
   better comparison of strings that lack language context in
   applications environments in which the additional processing and
   character classifications of IDNA and/or PRECIS were not applicable.
   Having such a normalization procedure defined outside IDNA would also
   minimize changes to IDNA itself, which is probably an advantage.

   If the new normalizstion form were, in practice, simply an overlay on
   NFC with modifications dictated by exception and/or property lists,
   keeping its definition separate from IDNA would also avoid
   interweaving those exceptions and property lists with the rules and
   categories of IDNA itself, avoiding some unnecessary complexity.






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6.  Editorial clarification to RFC 5892

   Verified RFC Editor Erratum 3312 [RFC5892Erratum] provides a
   clarification to Appendix A and Section A.1 of RFC 5892.  This
   section of this document updates the RFC to apply that clarification.

   1.  In Appendix A, add a new paragraph after the paragraph that
       begins "The code point...".  The new paragraph should read:

       "For the rule to be evaluated to True for the label, it MUST be
       evaluated separately for every occurrence of the Code point in
       the label; each of those evaluations must result in True."

   2.  In Appendix A, Section A.1, replace the "Rule Set" by

      Rule Set:
        False;
        If Canonical_Combining_Class(Before(cp)) .eq.  Virama Then True;
        If cp .eq. \u200C And
               RegExpMatch((Joining_Type:{L,D})(Joining_Type:T)*cp
          (Joining_Type:T)*(Joining_Type:{R,D})) Then True;

7.  Acknowledgements

   The Unicode 7.0.0 changes were extensively discussed within the IAB's
   Internationalization Program.  The authors are grateful for the
   discussions and feedback there, especially from Andrew Sullivan and
   David Thaler.  Additional information was requested and received from
   Mark Davis and Ken Whistler and while they probably do not agree with
   the necessity of excluding this code point or taking even more
   drastic action as their responsibility is to look at the Unicode
   Consortium requirements for stability, the decision would not have
   been possible without their input.  Thanks to Bill McQuillan and Ted
   Hardie for reading versions of the document carefully enough to
   identify and report some confusing typographical errors.  Several
   experts and reviewers who prefer to remain anonymous also provided
   helpful input and comments on preliminary versions of this document.

8.  IANA Considerations

   When the IANA registry and tables are updated to reflect Unicode
   7.0.0, changes should be made according to the decisions the IETF
   makes about Section 5.








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9.  Security Considerations

   From at least one point of view, this document is entirely a
   discussion of a security issue or set of such issues.  While the
   "similar-looking characters" issue that has been a concern since the
   earliest days of IDNs [HomographAttack] and that has driven assorted
   "character confusion" projects [ICANN-VIP], if a user types in a
   string on one device and can get different results that do not
   compare equal when it is typed on a different device (with both
   behaving correctly and both keyboards appearing to be the same and
   for the same script) then all security mechanism that depend on the
   underlying identifiers, including the practical applications of DNS
   response integrity checks via DNSSEC [RFC4033] and DNS-embedded
   public key mechanisms [RFC6698], are at risk if different parties, at
   least one of them malicious, obtain or register some of the
   identical-appearing and identically-typed strings and get them into
   appropriate zones.

   Mechanisms that depend on trusting registration systems (e.g.,
   registries and registrars in the DNS IDN case, see Section 5.6 above)
   are likely to be of only limited utility because fully-qualified
   domains that may be perfectly reasonable at the first level or two of
   the DNS may have differences of this type deep in the tree, into
   levels where name management, and often accountability, are weak.
   Similar issues obviously apply when names are user-selected or
   unmanaged.

   When the issue is not a deliberate attack but simple accidental
   confusion among similar strings, most of our strategies depend on the
   acceptability of false negatives on matching if there is low risk of
   false positives (see, for example, the discussion of false negatives
   in identifier comparison in Section 2.1 of RFC 6943 [RFC6943]).
   Aspects of that issue appear in, for example, RFC 3986 [RFC3986] and
   the PRECIS effort [RFC8264].  However, because the cases covered here
   are connected, not just to what the user sees but to what is typed
   and where, there is an increased risk of false positives (accidental
   as well as deliberate).

   [[CREF7: Note in Draft: The paragraph that follows was written for a
   much earlier version of this document.  It is obsolete, but is being
   retained as a placeholder for future developments.]]

   This specification excludes a code point for which the Unicode-
   specified normalization behavior could result in two ways to form a
   visually-identical character within the same script not comparing
   equal.  That behavior could create a dream case for someone intending
   to confuse the user by use of a domain name that looked identical to




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   another one, was entirely in the same script, but was still
   considered different.

   Internet Security in areas that involve internationalized identifiers
   that might contain the relevant characters is therefore significantly
   dependent on some effective resolution for the issues identified in
   this document, not just hand waving, devout wishes, or appointment of
   study committees about it.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [RFC5137]  Klensin, J., "ASCII Escaping of Unicode Characters",
              BCP 137, RFC 5137, DOI 10.17487/RFC5137, February 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5137>.

   [RFC5890]  Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
              Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework",
              RFC 5890, DOI 10.17487/RFC5890, August 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5890>.

   [RFC5892]  Faltstrom, P., Ed., "The Unicode Code Points and
              Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)",
              RFC 5892, DOI 10.17487/RFC5892, August 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5892>.

   [RFC5892Erratum]
              "RFC5892, "The Unicode Code Points and Internationalized
              Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)", August 2010, Errata
              ID: 3312", Errata ID 3312, August 2012,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php/doc/html/rfc5892>.

   [RFC5894]  Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
              Applications (IDNA): Background, Explanation, and
              Rationale", RFC 5894, DOI 10.17487/RFC5894, August 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5894>.

   [RFC6943]  Thaler, D., Ed., "Issues in Identifier Comparison for
              Security Purposes", RFC 6943, DOI 10.17487/RFC6943, May
              2013, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6943>.

   [RFC8264]  Saint-Andre, P. and M. Blanchet, "PRECIS Framework:
              Preparation, Enforcement, and Comparison of
              Internationalized Strings in Application Protocols",
              RFC 8264, DOI 10.17487/RFC8264, October 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8264>.




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   [UAX15]    Davis, M., Ed., "Unicode Standard Annex #15: Unicode
              Normalization Forms", June 2014,
              <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/>.

   [UAX15-Exclusion]
              "Unicode Standard Annex #15: ob. cit., Section 5",
              <http://www.unicode.org/reports/
              tr15/#Primary_Exclusion_List_Table>.

   [UAX15-Versioning]
              "Unicode Standard Annex #15, ob. cit., Section 3",
              <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/#Versioning>.

   [Unicode5]
              The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard, Version
              5.0", ISBN 0-321-48091-0, 2007.

              Boston, MA, USA: Addison-Wesley.  ISBN 0-321-48091-0.
              This printed reference has now been updated online to
              reflect additional code points.  For code points, the
              reference at the time RFC 5890-5894 were published is to
              Unicode 5.2.

   [Unicode62]
              The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard, Version
              6.2.0", ISBN 978-1-936213-07-8, 2012,
              <http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.2.0/>.

              Preferred citation: The Unicode Consortium.  The Unicode
              Standard, Version 6.2.0, (Mountain View, CA: The Unicode
              Consortium, 2012.  ISBN 978-1-936213-07-8)

   [Unicode7]
              The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard, Version
              7.0.0", ISBN 978-1-936213-09-2, 2014,
              <http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode7.0.0/>.

              Preferred Citation: The Unicode Consortium.  The Unicode
              Standard, Version 7.0.0, (Mountain View, CA: The Unicode
              Consortium, 2014.  ISBN 978-1-936213-09-2)

   [Unicode70-Arabic]
              "The Unicode Standard, Version 7.0.0, ob.cit., Chapter
              9.2: Arabic", Chapter 9, 2014,
              <http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode7.0.0/ch09.pdf>.

              Subsection titled "Encoding Principles", paragraph
              numbered 4, starting on page 362.



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   [Unicode70-CompatDecomp]
              "The Unicode Standard, Version 7.0.0, ob.cit., Chapter
              2.3: Compatibility Characters", Chapter 2, 2014,
              <http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode7.0.0/ch02.pdf>.

              Subsection titled "Compatibility Decomposable Characters"
              starting on page 26.

   [Unicode70-Design]
              "The Unicode Standard, Version 7.0.0, ob.cit., Chapter
              2.2: Unicode Design Principles", Chapter 2, 2014,
              <http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode7.0.0/ch02.pdf>.

   [Unicode70-Hamza]
              "The Unicode Standard, Version 7.0.0, ob.cit., Chapter
              9.2: Arabic", Chapter 9, 2014,
              <http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode7.0.0/ch09.pdf>.

              Subsection titled "Combining Hamza Above" starting on page
              378.

   [Unicode70-Overlay]
              "The Unicode Standard, Version 7.0.0, ob.cit., Chapter
              2.2: Unicode Design Principles", Chapter 2, 2014,
              <http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode7.0.0/ch02.pdf>.

              Subsection titled "Non-decomposition of Overlaid
              Diacritics" starting on page 64.

   [Unicode70-Stability]
              "The Unicode Standard, Version 7.0.0, ob.cit., Chapter
              2.2: Unicode Design Principles", Chapter 2, 2014,
              <http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode7.0.0/ch02.pdf>.

              Subsection titled "Stability" starting on page 23 and
              containing a link to http://www.unicode.org/policies/
              stability_policy.html..

   [UTS46]    Davis, M. and M. Suignard, "Unicode Technical Standard
              #46: Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing",
              Version 7.0.0, June 2014,
              <http://unicode.org/reports/tr46/>.

10.2.  Informative References

   [Dalby]    Dalby, A., "Dictionary of Languages: The definitive
              reference to more than 400 languages", Columbia Univeristy
              Press , 2004.



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              pages 206-207

   [Daniels]  Daniels, P. and W. Bright, "The World's Writing Systems",
              Oxford University Press , 1986.

              page 744

   [Freytag-dangerous]
              Freytag, A., Klensin, J., and A. Sullivan, "Those
              Troublesome Characters: A Registry of Unicode Code Points
              Needing Special Consideration When Used in Network
              Identifiers", June 2017,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/
              draft-freytag-troublesome-characters/>.

   [HomographAttack]
              Gabrilovich, E. and A. Gontmakher, "The Homograph Attack",
              Communications of the ACM 45(2):128, February 2002,
              <http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~gabr/papers/
              homograph_full.pdf>.

   [ICANN-VIP]
              ICANN, "The IDN Variant Issues Project: A Study of Issues
              Related to the Management of IDN Variant TLDs (Integrated
              Issues Report)", February 2012,
              <https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/
              idn-vip-integrated-issues-final-clean-20feb12-en.pdf>.

   [Klensin-rfc5891bis]
              Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names in
              Applications (IDNA): Registry Restrictions and
              Recommendations", September 2017,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/
              draft-klensin-idna-rfc5891bis/>.

   [Omniglot-Fula]
              Ager, S., "Omniglot: Fula (Fulfulde, Pulaar,
              Pular'Fulaare)",
              <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/fula.htm>.

              Captured 2015-01-07

   [RFC0020]  Cerf, V., "ASCII format for network interchange", STD 80,
              RFC 20, DOI 10.17487/RFC0020, October 1969,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc20>.






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   [RFC3490]  Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello,
              "Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)",
              RFC 3490, DOI 10.17487/RFC3490, March 2003,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3490>.

   [RFC3492]  Costello, A., "Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode
              for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications
              (IDNA)", RFC 3492, DOI 10.17487/RFC3492, March 2003,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3492>.

   [RFC3986]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
              Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
              RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.

   [RFC4033]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
              Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements",
              RFC 4033, DOI 10.17487/RFC4033, March 2005,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4033>.

   [RFC5564]  El-Sherbiny, A., Farah, M., Oueichek, I., and A. Al-Zoman,
              "Linguistic Guidelines for the Use of the Arabic Language
              in Internet Domains", RFC 5564, DOI 10.17487/RFC5564,
              February 2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5564>.

   [RFC6452]  Faltstrom, P., Ed. and P. Hoffman, Ed., "The Unicode Code
              Points and Internationalized Domain Names for Applications
              (IDNA) - Unicode 6.0", RFC 6452, DOI 10.17487/RFC6452,
              November 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6452>.

   [RFC6698]  Hoffman, P. and J. Schlyter, "The DNS-Based Authentication
              of Named Entities (DANE) Transport Layer Security (TLS)
              Protocol: TLSA", RFC 6698, DOI 10.17487/RFC6698, August
              2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6698>.

   [Unicode32]
              The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard, Version
              3.2.0".

              The Unicode Standard, Version 3.2.0 is defined by The
              Unicode Standard, Version 3.0 (Reading, MA, Addison-
              Wesley, 2000.  ISBN 0-201-61633-5), as amended by the
              Unicode Standard Annex #27: Unicode 3.1
              (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr27/) and by the Unicode
              Standard Annex #28: Unicode 3.2
              (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr28/).





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   [UTR53]    Unicode Consortium, "Proposed Draft: Unicode Technical
              Report #53: Unicode Arabic Mark Ordering Algorithm",
              August 2017, <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr53/>.

              Note: this is a Proposed Draft, out for public review when
              this version of the current I-D is posted, and should not
              be considered either an approved/ final document or a
              stable reference.

Appendix A.  Change Log

   RFC Editor: Please remove this appendix before publication.

A.1.  Changes from version -00 (2014-07-21)to -01

   o  Version 01 of this document is an extensive rewrite and
      reorganization, reflecting discussions with UTC members and adding
      three more options for discussion to the original proposal to
      simply disallow the new code point.

A.2.  Changes from version -01 (2014-12-07) to -02

   Corrected a typographical error in which Hamza Above was incorrectly
   listed with the wrong code point.

A.3.  Changes from version -02 (2014-12-07) to -03

   Corrected a typographical error in the Abstract in which RFC 5892 was
   incorrectly shown as 5982.

A.4.  Changes from version -03 (2015-01-06) to -04

   o  Explicitly identified the applicability of U+08A1 with Fula and
      added references that discuss that language and how it is written.

   o  Updated several Unicode 6.2 references to point to Unicode 7.0
      since the latter is now available in stable form (it was done when
      work on this I-D started).

   o  Extensively revised to discuss the non-Arabic cases, non-
      decomposing diacritics, other types of characters that don't
      compare equal after normalization, and more general problem and
      approaches.








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A.5.  Changes from version -04 (2015-03-11) to -05

   o  Modified a few citation labels to make them more obvious.

   o  Restructured Section 1 and added additional terminology comments.

   o  Added discussion about non-decomposable character cases, including
      the "slash" example, and associated references for which -04
      contained only placeholders.

   o  The examples and discussion of Latin script issues has been
      expanded considerably.  It is unfortunate that many readers in the
      IETF community apparently cannot understand examples well enough
      to believe a problem is significant unless they is a discussion of
      Latin script examples, but, at least for this working draft, that
      is the way it is.

   o  Rewrote the discussion of several of the alternatives and added
      the discussion of combining classes.

   o  Rewrote and extended the discussion of the "warn only"
      alternative.

   o  Several other sections modified to improve technical or editorial
      clarity.

   o  Note that, while some references have been updated, others have
      not.  In particular, Unicode references are still tied to versions
      6 or 7.  In some cases, those non-historical references are and
      will remain appropriate; others will best be replaced with
      information about current versions of documents.

Authors' Addresses

   John C Klensin
   1770 Massachusetts Ave, Ste 322
   Cambridge, MA  02140
   USA

   Phone: +1 617 245 1457
   Email: john-ietf@jck.com










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   Patrik Faltstrom
   Netnod
   Franzengatan 5
   Stockholm  112 51
   Sweden

   Phone: +46 70 6059051
   Email: paf@netnod.se











































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