Re: Moving the IDN RFCs from Proposed to Draft Standards

This is great news.  Thanks for the in-depth reply.
    john


--On Thursday, 06 November, 2003 10:26 -0800 "Paul Hoffman / 
IMC" <[email protected]> wrote:

> At 1:24 AM -0500 11/6/03, John C Klensin wrote:
>> It was my understanding of the agreements when the IDN
>> documents  were approved that, when they went to Draft, the
>> Draft versions  would incorporate a better statement of
>> applicability and scope than  the original versions and, in
>> particular, would incorporate the gist  of the "IESG
>> Statement" on IDN applicability and missing pieces.  That
>> agreement does not appear to be reflected in the text of the
>> new drafts.
>
> Just before the problem statement in
> draft-hoffman-rfc3490bis-01.txt, it says "The IESG issued a
> statement on IDNA [IESG-STATEMENT]." I didn't want to put the
> statement in directly because the IDNA authors didn't write
> the IESG statement, and it could dilute the value of the
> statement by making it appear to be something we did. However,
> seeing your concern, I'll ask the IESG about what they would
> prefer on this. I'm happy either way.
>
>> Since the purpose of IDNA is to deliver native-text
>> characters to  end user applications and the presentation to
>> the user, there is a  case to be made that the "interoperable
>> implementations" condition  needs to be demonstrated with
>> actual, end-user-oriented,  applications that deliver
>> non-ASCII characters to users.
>
> Fully agree.
>
>>   That is, interoperability between test environments that
>>   can  demonstrate the ability to prepare, code, and decode
>> strings is not  sufficient to demonstrate that interoperable
>> and conforming  implementations are possible.
>
> That is being debated in other parts of the IETF right now,
> but fortunately, it isn't an issue here.
>
>>   I can't tell from the IDNConnect "final report" whether
>>   that  stronger condition was met by those programs but, if
>> it was not,  some serious community discussion on this issue
>> is probably in order.
>
> Right. We specifically didn't list the participants because
> doing so made it easier for more organizations to test. Having
> said that, I can certainly say that many of the participants
> were testing "actual end-user-oriented applications".
>
> In my previous message, I said:
>
>     Subsequent to the event, I have validated one (unnamed,
> pre-release)
>     IDNA system passes all the tests that it should pass, and
> fails all
>     the test that should fail, as specified in the test
> description.
>
> That implementation is still unnamed and pre-release, but it
> is very definitely a "actual end-user-oriented application".
> There are many other such applications available, although
> some of them are useful only in particular regions.
>
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --Internet Mail Consortium
>