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Re: IDN and language

2005-01-05 09:18:34
 Date: 2005-01-04 12:06
 From: John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>

the
IDN situation is not an issue except in a very narrow sense and
similar situation would apply to local-parts if we ever do
something there.  In the IDN case, the protocols are written in
terms of arbitrary Unicode strings and just about have to be --
there has never been a DNS restriction requiring that the labels
be names or words in a language.  The protocols apply some
mapping rules that reject a few characters (and hence the labels
that contain them) and change some characters into others, but
the net effect is still a set of standards written in terms of
strings, not languages.

My concern is the distinction between "names" (in the sense used
in RFC 1958, i.e. protocol elements) vs. "text" (RFC 2277),
and internationalizing domain names seems to make sense only if
the domain names are being treated in some way as text (i.e.
human-readable content, and therefore (possibly, at least) in
some language (see 2277 section 2, third paragraph and section
4.1, first sentence).  RFC 2277, a.k.a. BCP 18, requires (sect.
4.2) that protocols which transfer text must have provision for
carrying language information.  The considerations for making
provision for language-tagging (N.B. not requiring that every
IDN be tagged) are clear when one considers presentation
issues for the visually impaired; a screen reader needs to be
able to identify language to correctly present at least some
subset of labels which might appear in either an IDN or
internationalized local-part.

The situation with local-parts will, most of us are convinced,
work out in much the same way.  There is a long history of
strings used in local-parts that are not "names", "words", or
otherwise bound to a particular language. [...]

Agreed, and I'd be happy if local parts and domain names were
to be treated purely as protocol elements.  But given the
decision to internationalize and hence the treatment as text
at least for presentation, there ought to be provision for
indicating language where necessary for correct presentation.

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