Re: [Idna-update] IDNA and combining sequences (was: Re: Expiration impending: <draft-klensin-idna-rfc5891bis-01.txt>)

["Patrik Fältström " <[e-mail]>]

On 9 Mar 2018, at 12:27, John C Klensin wrote:

> * Your explanation below is very helpful, at least to me.

Me too.

> I am
> confident that, if it was what we were given when we started the IDNA2008 design, some of the rules would have reflected it.   We were given a different explanation and answer to our questions, one much closer to "there is no problem and will be no problem in  the future, so don't worry - no special rules are needed".

Correct. Being on the receiving side of the messages, and one of the persons that asked the questions, yes, we asked, they responded...

> The question is what to do now.  If we were to decide that your discussion would made a good addition to the protocol, we would run into at least two problems.  One is that we promised the registry community that there would be no more disruptive
> changes and, at least as important, the Unicode Consortium
> outrage at our altering the way a handful of code points were treated would presumably be much greater if we were to make a change that would invalidate a large number of labels that might now be registered and in use somewhere in the tree.  Another is the problem that started this thread -- there appears to be no energy in the IETF to consider and process changes to IDNA, even fairly trivial clarifications.

I think we should do some scenario planning here. Remember that we do not have a world where IDNA2008 based on Unicode 6.x is what people use. People use all different kind of mix between IDNA2008, IDNA2003 and Unicode versions. I have myself worked with the curl library (that uses libidn) and to be honest, I do not think people KNOW what they use. Or they know, and they know they violate the rules. For the contracted parties, they have the LGR coming down the road anyways, so...

And *if* we go down this path, is it "enough" to do in the LGR (i.e. ICANN) or should IETF do some adoption (and W3C?), or should IETF say "we can move forward in a more safe way AS WE KNOW ICANN DO LGR"...

Or...

   Patrik