Subject: Re: [idn] Interactions between short-term and long-term

From: Dan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 11:52:31 +0100 (MET)

Patrik wrote:

>
>You said youself that you didn't want non-nameprepped domainnames 
>used as domainnames in configuration files etc.

No I did not, but there is one more Dan on this list.
I want to edit my configuration files using my normal
text editor. It is the responsibility of the application using
the configuration files to convert them into the character set
used internally in it.

>>But everybody do not have to understand "nameprep"!!
>
>Not everyone, that is correct. According to the IDNA spec only the 
>software which accept input from keyboard (etc) have to do nameprep. 

So you expect my text editor to do "nameprep" on the host names it finds
in my text?

>>And when I edit a zone file, it will not have
>>"namepreped" names.
>
>It all depends on what program you use when creating the zonefile.

A text editor.

>>A DNS server should not mangle the names
>>by doing forced conversion to lower case.
>
>Do not talk about other things than nameprep. That's the only thing 
>that is needed.

nameprep mangles my host names. They contain mixed case. And I want that
for more than ASCII.

It is ok to change "double width A", "greek A", "russian A" into A
because it will still be an A. But to make it lower case will
make non-nameprep enhanced programs fail and reduce readability
on names.

>>And the for DNS use, define a standard library that can be used in both
>>DNS servers and in clients that can take a name in normalised text form
>>and compare them. Doing like "nameprep" wants, by converting a name
>>into a representation that can be used compare domain names by
>>binary matching, is totally wrong for me.
>
>The keyword which you miss in your discussion is "compatibility" with 
>existing software which do not do nameprep. If we follow your 
>scenario and require nameprep functionality in all software which 
>compares domainnames then we will not have IDN implemented for many 
>more years.

Not at all. The way I have stated in my drafts where only the
authorative DNS server need to understand how to compare domain names
will allow quick introduction of IDN. The moment I have updated my
DNS server to allow IDN others in the world can lookup my names
even though the intermidate DNS servers do not understand how to do
the matching.

   Dan

---

From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 13:02:59 +0100

At 11.52 +0100 01-01-28, Dan wrote:
>It is the responsibility of the application using

And if the program doesn't do it, then you have to enter the 
domainnames in a nameprepped form.

>So you expect my text editor to do "nameprep" on the host names it finds

It all depends on in what context the textual string is a domainname.

>>It all depends on what program you use when creating the zonefile.

I repeat myself: it all depends on what program you use.

Where the support is doesn't matter.

>nameprep mangles my host names. They contain mixed case. And I want that

Then complain on the nameprep algorithm specifically.

   paf