Subject: Re: [idn] Renaming "AMC-Z"

From: Dan Oscarsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 08:16:28 +0200 (MEST)

>First let me clarify what I am trying to name.  I want a name for the
>transformation from any Unicode string to an ASCII string (and the
>reverse transformation).  The thing I am naming does not include the
>prefix (xx--), does not include syntax restrictions like the 63-octet
>limit, and does not include nameprep.  The thing I am naming is the
>operations performed by the pseudocode in the AMC-ACE-Z spec, and no
>more.
>
>If people are willing to use the name ACE or ACE-1 for this, that would
>be fine with me.  But if you would rather use the name ACE to refer
>to a larger operation, then I still want a name for the thing I just
>described.
>
>(Up to now, ACE has been a fuzzy term.  It hasn't been clear where its
>boundaries were.)

I agree. ACE should stand for the UCS into ASCII A-Za-z0-9- encoding.
No length restrictions, no nameprep. Though the UCS must be normalised
so that it is well defined.
That is, ACE should stands for:
- UCS normalised into Unicode form C
- then encoded into the characters A-Za-z0-9-

The specific rules that could be used over DNS could be called
BCE (Backward Compatible Encoding).

   Dan

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From: Yves Arrouye <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 09:23:23 -0700

> - then encoded into the characters A-Za-z0-9-

I wouldn't mix normalization with this. First, in the case of IDN, the
normalization is KC, and it follows some character mappings, and also
precedes some other code point validation (forbidden code points).

In addition to that, ACE drafts do not require the normalization. The RACE
one doesn't even mention it, and the AMC-ACE-Z simply acknowledges the fact
that this particular ACE, used in the context of IDNA, is applied on strings
that went through Nameprep first.

I am for keeping the separation between the two processes. Though I see why
one would want to mix them, since people typically refer (improperly I
believe) to the ACE-encoded IDN and not to the ACE-endoded Nameprepped-IDN,
while meaning the latter. Maybe it should be the IDNA-encoded IDN?

YA

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From: Yves Arrouye <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 09:25:30 -0700

I like Martin's suggestion of ACE-Z too. Simple, easy to remember, suggests
some kind of finality (please don't suggest AMC-OMEGA ;-))

YA

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From: "Adam M. Costello" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2001 19:05:58 -0700

Martin Duerst <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I don't know what the Z in AMC-Z stands for, but it seems to have
> served its purpose well up to now.

AMC-ACE-Z simply means the 26th ACE algorithm designed by AMC.

Perhaps "ACE" should not be an operation/process at all, but rather
a kind of label/name.  For example, we might speak this way:

foobar is not an ACE, but xx--blahblah is an ACE.  The domain name
<Thai-word>.com does not contain any ACE labels, but it has an ACE
form, which is xx--blahblah.com.  In order to construct the ACE form of
a domain label, you need to apply certain operations, like Nameprep,
Bootstring with certain parameters, syntax checking, and prepending a
prefix.

("Bootstring with certain parameters" is what is currently known as
AMC-ACE-Z.)

If we were to take that approach, then the name for "Bootstring with
certain parameters" would not matter so much, because the general public
would seldom have reason to refer to it; they'd usually be speaking
about ACEs.

Here's a summary of the names under consideration:

First, there is ACE and a number of variants (ACE-1, ACE-Z, Z-ACE, etc).
If we go with any of those, I lean toward simply "ACE".

Next, there are a number of other acronyms, none of which I like.

Finally, there are some non-acronyms, all of which have been suggested
by me and which have received no comment:  Bootstring-646, Minicode,
Unimplode.  These names would be appropriate for the current AMC-ACE-Z
parameters, which were chosen to favor Unicode.  If we end up doing
reordering and changing the parameters to favor reordered Unicode, then
those names would not be appropriate for the new parameters.

AMC