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IDNA Review and Status

John C Klensin APNIC Beijing, 25 August 2009. IDNA Review and Status. IDNA History. Initial version of Standard Approved and published 2003 Widely deployed and used in some parts of the world Decision to use in a zone rests with the zone administration Issues Exclusion model

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IDNA Review and Status

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  1. John C Klensin APNIC Beijing, 25 August 2009 IDNA Review and Status

  2. IDNA History • Initial version of Standard • Approved and published 2003 • Widely deployed and used in some parts of the world • Decision to use in a zone rests with the zone administration • Issues • Exclusion model • Some language difficulties • Unicode 2.3

  3. Problem Analysis • Confusion – some deliberate • Registries and ad hoc browser decisions the only defense • Exclusion versus inclusion models • New Unicode versions • Mapping confusion • Visually confusable characters • Other types of confusion • Information-losing mapping confused many • Characters other than letters and digits • RFC 4690

  4. IDNA2008 • Work started in design team, mid-2007 • Unicode independence • Inclusion • Rule-based, not algorithms • Some fixes • IETF WG established early 2008 • Assumed about six months • Now about 18 and continuing

  5. Why the Delay? • Inclusion requires making more decisions than “permit anything” • Desire to tune to perceived needs of particular languages • Unicode not obviously optimal for IDN use • Backward compatibility issues, particularly • Preservation of IDNA2003 Mapping • Long debates about a few different character interpretations • Other agendas

  6. Good News for a Change • Manila APNIC: No prediction about completion date • Beijing APNIC: Expect IETF Last Call in September • Things could still go wrong • If all goes smoothly, possible approval in October • Or....

  7. Transition 1 • Some labels are valid (but ill-advised) in IDNA2003 but invalid in IDNA2008 • Registrants will need to migrate legitimate uses (if any)‏ • Conforming applications will enforce • Two characters (0.002%) change interpretation • Mapping limited and advisory • U-labels and A-labels are symmetric • Only U-labels and A-labels in IRIs/URIs etc • New rules and tables

  8. Transition 2 • Registries need policies • Most already have them • Work needed to support new characters • Particularly those explicitly banned or ignored in IDNA2003 • Maybe some need for variants and sunrise, depending on script and usage.

  9. IDNA2008 Will Still Not Solve • Connectivity problems • Keyboard problems • Complex policy problems • Internationalization tends to increase such problems • Language-specific issues within a script • DNS doesn't know about languages • Label strings are generally too short to establish language context (mnemonics are impossible)‏

  10. But... • IDNA2008 will provide a better foundation for working on those problems than IDNA2003 • We may be closer to being ready to address them

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