Subject: [idn] Proposal to re-prohibit U+3002

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 13:25:07 -0800

Greetings again. James Seng pointed out a difference between 
nameprep-00 and nameprep-02 that has a significant impact on Asian 
input mechanisms. In many Asian IMEs, typing the "period" character 
on the keyboard enters U+3002 into the IME. Clearly, the user is 
doing this to enter a period (U+002E), and the only way to actually 
enter U+002E is to toggle between their native characters and ASCII 
for that single character.

U+3002 was prohibited in nameprep-00 because of its similarity to 
U+002E, but it is allowed in nameprep-02. The nameprep design team 
has tentatively agreed that we should revise nameprep to prohibit 
U+3002, not because it looks like U+002E (in fact, in many fonts, 
they look different), but because it is used as if it were U+002E in 
input mechanisms. This would allow IME makers to safely map U+3002 to 
U+002E *before* doing nameprep without worrying about preventing 
users from accessing legitimate host name parts.

Just to be clear, this is not "fixing" something in 10646/Unicode, 
but making it easier for Asian IMEs to do the right thing with name 
parts.

Comments?

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

---

From: Yoshiro YONEYA <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 08:44:22 +0900 (JST)

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Subject: [idn] Proposal to re-prohibit U+3002
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 13:25:07 -0800

> users from accessing legitimate host name parts.

I think prohibiting U+3002 is essential.  Actually some Japanese vocal
groups using it as name, so that some people oppose or nervous
prohibiting it, but using it is harmful in technical reason.  Names
using U+3002 looks like domain name, but actually it is a single word,
then DNS queries for that name will cause TLD query to the root
servers.

I explained this problem at APAN/TransPAC/NLANR/Internet2 Techs
Workshop today.  The presentation material will be available soon from
the following URL.
http://www.ncne.nlanr.net/training/techs/2001/0128/mtgnotice.html

P.S.
Next version of mDNkit will provide such delimiter mapping as a part
of localization functionality.  mDNkit is distributed at JPNIC's web
page as opensource with BSD-like license.  It is now included in ISC
BIND's (BIND-8.2.3 / BIND-9.1.0) contrib area.

-- 
Yoshiro YONEYA <[email-masked]>
           aka <[email-masked]>