Internet DRAFT - draft-klensin-idna-unicode-review
draft-klensin-idna-unicode-review
Network Working Group J. Klensin
Internet-Draft
Updates: 589 (if approved) P. Faltstrom
Intended status: Standards Track Netnod
Expires: May 6, 2020 November 03, 2019
IDNA Review for New Unicode Versions
draft-klensin-idna-unicode-review-05
Abstract
The standards for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications
(IDNA) require a review of each new version of Unicode to determine
whether incompatibilities with prior versions or other issues exist
and, where appropriate, to allow the IETF to decide on the trade-offs
between compatibility with prior IDNA versions and compatibility with
Unicode going forward. That requirement, and its relationship to
tables maintained by IANA, has caused significant confusion in the
past. This document makes adjustments to the review procedure based
on experience and updates IDNA, specifically RFC 5892, to reflect
those changes and clarify the various relationships involved. It
also makes other minor adjustments to align that document with
experience.
Status of This Memo
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provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on May 6, 2020.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Brief History of IDNA Versions, the Review Requirement, and
RFC 5982 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. The Review Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Review Model Part I: Algorithmic Comparison . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Review Model Part II: New Code Point Analysis . . . . . . 5
4. IDNA Assumptions and Current Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Derived Tables Published by IANA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Editorial clarification to RFC 5892 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Appendix A. Summary of Changes to RFC 5892 . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Appendix B. Background and Rationale for Expert Review Procedure
for New Code Point Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Appendix C. Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
C.1. Changes from version -00 (2019-06-12) to -01 . . . . . . 15
C.2. Changes from version -01 (2019-07-06) to -02 . . . . . . 16
C.3. Changes from version -02 (2019-07-22) to -03 . . . . . . 16
C.4. Changes from version -03 (2019-08-29) to -04 . . . . . . 16
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1. Introduction
The standards for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications
(IDNA) require a review of each new version of Unicode to determine
whether incompatibilities with prior versions or other issues exist
and, where appropriate, to allow the IETF to decide on the trade-offs
between compatibility with prior IDNA versions and compatibility with
Unicode [Unicode] going forward. That requirement, and its
relationship to tables maintained by IANA, has caused significant
confusion in the past (see Section 3 and Section 4 for additional
discussion of the question of appropriate decisions and the history
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of these reviews). This document makes adjustments to the review
procedure based on nearly a decade of experience and updates IDNA,
specifically the document that specifies the relationship between
Unicode code points and IDNA derived properties [RFC5892], to reflect
those changes and clarify the various relationships involved.
This specification does not change the requirement that registries,
at all levels of the DNS tree, take responsibility for the labels
they are inserting in the DNS, a level of responsibility that
requires allowing only a subset of the code points and strings
allowed by the IDNA protocol itself. That requirement is discussed
in more detail in a companion document [RegRestr].
Terminology note: In this document, "IDNA" refers to the current
version as described in RFC 5890 [RFC5890] and subsequent documents
and sometimes known as "IDNA2008". Distinctions between it and the
earlier version are explicit only where that is necessary to
understanding the relationships involved, e.g., in Section 2.
2. Brief History of IDNA Versions, the Review Requirement, and RFC 5982
The original, now-obsolete, version of IDNA, commonly known as
"IDNA2003" [RFC3490] [RFC3491], was defined in terms of a profile of
a collection of IETF-specific tables [RFC3454] that specified the
usability of each Unicode code point with IDNA. Because the tables
themselves were normative, they were intrinsically tied to a
particular version of Unicode. As Unicode evolved, the standard
would either have required a new version for each new version of
Unicode or it would fall further and further behind.
When that version of IDNA was superseded by the current one, known as
IDNA2008 [RFC5890], a different strategy, one that was property-based
rather than table-based, was adopted for a number of reasons of which
the reliance on normative tables was not dominant [RFC4690]. In the
IDNA2008 model, the use of normative tables was replaced by a set of
procedures and rules that operated on Unicode properties
[Unicode-properties] and a few internal definitions to determine the
category and status, and hence an IDNA-specific "derived property",
for any given code point. Those rules are, in principle, independent
of Unicode versions. They can be applied to any version of Unicode,
at least from approximately version 5.0 forward, to yield an
appropriate set of derived properties. However, the working group
that defined IDNA2008 recognized that not all of the Unicode
properties were completely stable and that, because the criteria for
new code points and property assignment used by the Unicode
Consortium might not precisely align with the needs of IDNA, there
were possibilities of incompatible changes to the derived property
value. More specifically, there could be changes that would make
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previously-disallowed labels valid, previously-valid labels
disallowed, or that would be disruptive to IDNA's defining rule
structure. Consequently, IDNA2008 provided for an expert review of
each new version of Unicode with the possibility of providing
exceptions to the rules for particular new code points, code points
whose properties had changed, and newly-discovered issues with the
IDNA2008 collection of rules. When problems were identified, the
reviewer was expected to notify the IESG. The assumption was that
the IETF would review the situation and modify IDNA2008 as needed,
most likely by adding exceptions to preserve backward compatibility
(see Section 3.1 below).
For the convenience of the community, IDNA2008 also provided that
IANA would maintain copies of calculated tables resulting from each
review, showing the derived properties for each code point. Those
tables were expected to be helpful, especially to those without the
facilities to easily compute derived properties themselves.
Experience with the community and those tables has shown that they
have been confused with the normative tables of IDNA2003: the
IDNA2008 tables published by IANA have never been normative and
statements about IDNA2008 being out of date with regard to some
Unicode version because the IANA tables have not been updated are
incorrect or meaningless.
3. The Review Model
While the text has sometimes been interpreted differently, IDNA2008
actually calls for two types of review when a new Unicode version is
introduced. One is an algorithmic comparison of the set of derived
properties calculated from the new version of Unicode to the derived
properties calculated from the previous one to determine whether
incompatible changes have occurred. The other is a review of newly-
assigned code points to determine whether any of them require special
treatment (e.g., assignment of what IDNA2008 calls contextual rules)
and whether any of them violate any of the assumptions underlying the
IDNA2008 derived property calculations. Any of the cases of either
review might require either per-code point exceptions or other
adjustments to the rules for deriving properties that are part of RFC
5892. The subsections below provide a revised specification for the
review procedure.
Unless the IESG or the Designated Expert conclude that there are
special problems or unusual circumstances, these reviews will be
performed only for major Unicode versions (those numbered NN.0, e.g.,
12.0) and not for minor updates (e.g., 12.1).
As can be seen in the detailed descriptions in the following
sections, proper review will require a team of experts that has both
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broad and specific skills in reviewing Unicode characters and their
properties in relation to both the written standards and operational
needs. The IESG will need to appoint experts who can draw on the
broader community to obtain the necessary skills for particular
situations. See the IANA Considerations (Section 8) for details.
3.1. Review Model Part I: Algorithmic Comparison
Section 5.1 of RFC 5892 is the description of the process for
creating the initial IANA tables. It is noteworthy that, while it
can be read as strongly implying new reviews and new tables for
versions of Unicode after 5.2, it does not explicitly specify those
reviews or, e.g., the timetable for completing them. It also
indicates that incompatibilities are to be "flagged for the IESG" but
does not specify exactly what the IESG is to do about them and when.
For reasons related to the other type of review and discussed below,
only one review was completed, documented [RFC6452], and a set of
corresponding new tables installed. That review, for Unicode 6.0,
found only three incompatibilities; the consensus was to ignore them
(not create exceptions in IDNA2008) and remain consistent with
computations based on current (Unicode 6.0) properties rather than
preserving backward compatibility within IDNA. The 2018 review (for
Unicode 11.0 and versions in between it and 6.0) [IDNA-Unicode12]
also concluded that Unicode compatibility, rather than IDNA backward
compatibility, should be maintained. That decision was partially
driven by the long period between reviews and the concern that table
calculations by others in the interim could result in unexpected
incompatibilities if derived property definitions where then changed.
See Section 4 for further discussion of these preferences.
3.2. Review Model Part II: New Code Point Analysis
The second type of review is not clearly explained in RFC 5892, but
is intended to identify cases in which newly-added code points, or
perhaps even newly-discovered problematic older ones, violate design
assumptions of IDNA, identify defects in those assumptions, or are
inconsistent (from an IDNA perspective) with Unicode commitments
about assignment, properties, and stability of newly-added code
points. The discovery after Unicode 7.0 was released that new code
points were being added that were potentially visually equivalent, in
the same script, to previously-available code point sequences was one
example of the type of situation the review was expected to discover
(and did so [IAB-Unicode7-2015] [IDNA-Unicode7]).
Because multiple perspectives on Unicode and writing systems are
required, this review will not be successful unless done by a team --
a single, all-knowing, Designated Expert is not feasible or likely to
produce an adequate analysis. Rather than any single expert being
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the sole source of analysis, the designated expert team needs to
understand that there will always be gaps in their knowledge, to know
what they don't know, and to work to find the expertise that each
review requires. It is also important that the DE team maintains
close contact with the Area Directors and that the ADs remain aware
of the team's changing needs, reviewing and adjusting the team's
membership over time, with periodic reviews at least annually. It
should also be recognized that, if this review identifies a problem,
that problem is likely to be complex and/or involve multiple trade-
offs. Actions to deal with it are likely to be disruptive (although
perhaps not to large communities of users) or to leave either
security risks (opportunities for attacks and inadvertent confusion
as expected matches do not occur) or excessive reliance on registries
understanding and taking responsibility for what they are registering
[RFC5894] [RegRestr]. The latter, while a requirement of IDNA, has
often not worked out well in the past.
Because resolution of problems identified by this part of the review
may take some time even if that resolution is to add additional
contextual rules or disallow one or more code points, there will be
cases in which it will be appropriate to publish the results of the
algorithmic review and provide IANA with corresponding tables, with
warnings about code points whose status is uncertain until there are
IETF consensus conclusions about how to proceed. The affected code
points should be considered unsafe and identified as "under review"
in the IANA tables until final derived properties are assigned.
4. IDNA Assumptions and Current Practice
At the time the IDNA2008 documents were written, the assumption was
that, if new versions of Unicode introduced incompatible changes, the
Standard would be updated to preserve backward compatibility for
users of IDNA. For most purposes, this would be done by adding to
the table of exceptions associated with Rule G [RFC5892a].
This has not been the practice in the reviews completed subsequent to
Unicode 5.2, as discussed in Section 3. Incompatibilities were
identified in Unicode 6.0 [RFC6452], in the cumulative review leading
to tables for Unicode 11.0 [ID.draft-faltstrom-unicode11]. In all of
those cases, the decision was made to maintain compatibility with
Unicode properties rather than with prior versions of IDNA.
Subsequent to the publication of this document, changes in Unicode
detected by algorithmic reviews that would break compatibility with
derived properties associated with prior versions of Unicode or that
preserve such compatibility within IDNA at the price of departing
from current Unicode specifications must be documented (in documents
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expected to be published as standards track RFCs), explained to, and
reviewed by the IETF.
The community has now made decisions and updated tables for Unicode
6.0 [RFC6452], done catch-up work between it and Unicode 11.0
[ID.draft-faltstrom-unicode11], and completed the review and tables
for Unicode 12.0 [IDNA-Unicode12]. The decisions made in those cases
were driven by preserving consistency with Unicode and Unicode
property changes for reasons most clearly explained by the IAB
[IAB-Unicode-2018]. Doing things that way is not only at variance
with the language in RFC 5892 but is also inconsistent with
commitments to the registry and user communities to ensure that IDN
labels, once valid under IDNA2008, would remain valid and, excepting
those that were invalid because they contained unassigned code
points, those that were invalid remained invalid.
This document restores and clarifies that original language and
intent: absent extremely strong evidence on a per-code point basis
that preserving the validity status of possible existing (or
prohibited) labels would cause significant harm, Unicode changes that
would affect IDNA derived properties are to be reflected in IDNA
exceptions that preserve the status of those labels. There is one
partial exception to this principle. If the new code point analysis
(see Section 3.2) concludes that some code points or collections of
code points should be further analyzed, those code points, and labels
including them, should be considered unsafe and used only with
extreme caution because the conclusions of the analysis may change
their derived property values and status.
5. Derived Tables Published by IANA
As discussed above, RFC 5892 specified that derived property tables
be provided via an IANA registry. Perhaps because most IANA
registries are considered normative and authoritative, that registry
has been the source of considerable confusion, including the
incorrect assumption that the absence of published tables for
versions of Unicode later than 6.0 meant that IDNA could not be used
with later versions. That position was raised in multiple ways, not
all of them consistent, especially in the ICANN context
[ICANN-LGR-SLA].
If the changes specified in this document are not successful in
significantly mitigating the confusion about the status of the tables
published by IANA, serious consideration should be given to
eliminating those tables entirely.
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6. Editorial clarification to RFC 5892
In order to avoid this document going forward with remaining known
errors or omissions in RFC 5892, this section updates that document
to provide fixes to known applicable errata. In particular, verified
RFC Editor Erratum 3312 [RFC5892Erratum] provides a clarification to
Appendix A and Section A.1 of RFC 5892. That clarification is
resolved below.
1. In Appendix A, add a new paragraph after the paragraph that
begins "The code point...". The new paragraph should read:
"For the rule to be evaluated to True for the label, it MUST be
evaluated separately for every occurrence of the Code point in
the label; each of those evaluations must result in True."
2. In Appendix A, Section A.1, replace the "Rule Set" by
Rule Set:
False;
If Canonical_Combining_Class(Before(cp)) .eq. Virama
Then True;
If cp .eq. \u200C And
RegExpMatch((Joining_Type:{L,D})(Joining_Type:T)*cp
(Joining_Type:T)*(Joining_Type:{R,D})) Then True;
7. Acknowledgements
This document was inspired by extensive discussions within the I18N
Directorate of the IETF Applications and Real Time (ART) area in the
first quarter of 2019 about sorting out the reviews for Unicode 11.0
and 12.0. Careful reviews by Joel Halpern and text suggestions from
Barry Leiba resulted in some clarifications.
Thanks to Christopher Wood for catching some editorial errors that
persisted until rather late in the draft's life cycle and to Benjamin
Kaduk for catching and raising a number of questions during Last
Call. Some of the issues they raised have been reflected in the
document; others did appear to be desirable modifications after
further discussion but the questions were definitely worth raising
and discussion.
8. IANA Considerations
For the algorithmic review described in Section 3.1, the IESG is to
appoint a Designated Expert [RFC8126] with appropriate expertise to
conduct the review and supply derived property tables to IANA. As
provided in Section 5.2 of the Guidelines for Writing IANA
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Considerations [RFC8126], the Designated Expert is expected to
consult additional sources of expertise as needed. For the code
point review, the expertise will be supplied by an IESG-designated
expert team as discussed in Section 3.2 and Appendix B. In both
cases, the experts should draw on the expertise of other members of
the community as needed. In particular, and especially if there is
no overlap in the people holding the various roles, coordination with
the IAB-appointed liaison to the Unicode Consortium will be essential
to mitigate possible errors due to confusion.
As discussed in Section 5, and if they have not already done so, IANA
is requested to modify the IDNA tables collection [IANA-IDNA-Tables]
to identify them clearly as non-normative and in a way that drops the
idea of a "current" or "correct" version of those tables, pointing to
this document for an explanation. That includes publishing and
retaining tables, as supplied by the IETF's Designated Expert, for
each new version of Unicode after this document is published, keeping
all older versions available. IANA is also requested to change the
current title of that registry from "IDNA Parameters", which is
misleading, to "IDNA Rules and Derived Property Values".
The "Note" in that registry should also be revised to be consistent
with the above, perhaps to say:
"IDNA does not require that applications and libraries, either for
registration/storage or lookup, support any particular version of
Unicode. Instead, they are required to use derived property
values based on calculations associated with whatever version of
Unicode they are using elsewhere in the application or library.
For the convenience of application and library developers and
others, the IETF has supplied, and IANA maintains, derived
property tables for several version of Unicode as listed below.
It should be stressed that these are not normative in that, in
principle, an application can do its own calculations and these
tables can change as IETF understanding evolves. By contrast, the
list of code points requiring contextual rules and the associated
rules are normative and should be treated as updates to the list
in RFC 5892."
As long as the intent is preserved, the specific text is at IANA's
discretion.
IANA's attention is called to the introduction, in Section 3.2, of a
temporary "under review" category to the PVALID, DISALLOWED, etc.,
entries in the tables.
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9. Security Considerations
Application of the procedures described in this document and
understanding of the clarifications it provides should reduce
confusion about IDNA requirements. Because past confusion has
provided opportunities for bad behavior, the effect of these changes
should improve Internet security to at least some small extent.
Because of the preference to keep the derived property value stable
(as specified in RFC 5892 and discussed in Section 4), the algorithm
used to calculate those derived properties does change as explained
in Section 3. If these changes are not taken into account, the
derived property value will change and the implications might have
negative consequences, in some cases with security implications. For
example, changes in the calculated derived property value for a code
point from either DISALLOWED to PVALID or from PVALID to DISALLOWED
can cause changes in label interpretation that would be visible and
confusing to end users and might enable attacks.
10. References
10.1. Normative References
[IANA-IDNA-Tables]
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IDNA), "IDNA
Parameters", March 2019,
<https://www.iana.org/assignments/idna-tables-11.0.0/idna-
tables-11.0.0.xhtml>.
This documents make changes to this registry and a way
that could change the title, the URL, or both. This
citation is to be version published on 2019-03-31. It may
be appropriate to supply a citation to the finished
version when this document is published.
[RFC5892] Faltstrom, P., Ed., "The Unicode Code Points and
Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)",
RFC 5892, DOI 10.17487/RFC5892, August 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5892>.
[RFC5892a]
Faltstrom, P., Ed., "The Unicode Code Points and
Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)",
RFC 5892, August 2010,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5892.txt>.
Section 2.7
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[RFC5892Erratum]
"RFC5892, "The Unicode Code Points and Internationalized
Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)", August 2010, Errata
ID: 3312", Errata ID 3312, August 2012,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=5892>.
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.
[Unicode] The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard (Current
Version)", 2019,
<http://www.unicode.org/versions/latest/>.
The link given will always access the current version of
the Unicode Standard, independent of its version number or
date.
[Unicode-properties]
The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard Version
11.0", 2018,
<https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode11.0.0/>.
Section 3.5.
10.2. Informative References
[IAB-Unicode-2018]
Internet Architecture Board (IAB), "IAB Statement on
Identifiers and Unicode", March 2018,
<https://www.iab.org/documents/correspondence-reports-
documents/2018-2/iab-statement-on-identifiers-and-
unicode/>.
[IAB-Unicode7-2015]
Internet Architecture Board (IAB), "IAB Statement on
Identifiers and Unicode 7.0.0", February 2015,
<https://www.iab.org/documents/correspondence-reports-
documents/2015-2/iab-statement-on-identifiers-and-unicode-
7-0-0/>.
[ICANN-LGR-SLA]
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN), "Proposed IANA SLAs for Publishing LGRs/IDN
Tables", June 2019, <https://www.icann.org/public-
comments/proposed-iana-sla-lgr-idn-tables-2019-06-10-en>.
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Captured 2019-06-12. In public comment until 2019-07-26.
[ID.draft-faltstrom-unicode11]
Faltstrom, P., "IDNA2008 and Unicode 11.0.0", March 2019,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-faltstrom-
unicode11/>.
[IDNA-Unicode12]
Faltstrom, P., "IDNA2008 and Unicode 12.0.0", March 2019,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-faltstrom-
unicode12/>.
This document is in the RFC Editor queue at of 2019-06-09.
Update to RFC reference if/when appropriate.
[IDNA-Unicode7]
Klensin, J. and P. Falstrom, "IDNA Update for Unicode
7.0.0", January 2015, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/
draft-klensin-idna-5892upd-unicode70/03/>.
Note that this is an historical reference to a superseded
document. There is nothing "in progress" about it.
[RegRestr]
Klensin, J. and A. Freytag, "Internationalized Domain
Names in Applications (IDNA): Registry Restrictions and
Recommendations", July 2019,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klensin-idna-
rfc5891bis/>.
[RFC1766] Alvestrand, H., "Tags for the Identification of
Languages", RFC 1766, DOI 10.17487/RFC1766, March 1995,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1766>.
[RFC3282] Alvestrand, H., "Content Language Headers", RFC 3282,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3282, May 2002,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3282>.
[RFC3454] Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Preparation of
Internationalized Strings ("stringprep")", RFC 3454,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3454, December 2002,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3454>.
[RFC3490] Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello,
"Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)",
RFC 3490, DOI 10.17487/RFC3490, March 2003,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3490>.
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[RFC3491] Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Nameprep: A Stringprep
Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)",
RFC 3491, DOI 10.17487/RFC3491, March 2003,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3491>.
[RFC3629] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, DOI 10.17487/RFC3629, November
2003, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3629>.
[RFC4690] Klensin, J., Faltstrom, P., Karp, C., and IAB, "Review and
Recommendations for Internationalized Domain Names
(IDNs)", RFC 4690, DOI 10.17487/RFC4690, September 2006,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4690>.
[RFC5646] Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., "Tags for Identifying
Languages", BCP 47, RFC 5646, DOI 10.17487/RFC5646,
September 2009, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5646>.
[RFC5890] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework",
RFC 5890, DOI 10.17487/RFC5890, August 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5890>.
[RFC5894] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
Applications (IDNA): Background, Explanation, and
Rationale", RFC 5894, DOI 10.17487/RFC5894, August 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5894>.
[RFC6452] Faltstrom, P., Ed. and P. Hoffman, Ed., "The Unicode Code
Points and Internationalized Domain Names for Applications
(IDNA) - Unicode 6.0", RFC 6452, DOI 10.17487/RFC6452,
November 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6452>.
Appendix A. Summary of Changes to RFC 5892
Other than the editorial correction specified in Section 6 all of the
changes in this document are concerned with the reviews for new
versions of Unicode and with the IANA Considerations in Section 5,
particularly Section 5.1, of RFC 5982. Whether the changes are
substantive or merely clarifications may be somewhat in the eye of
the beholder so the list below should not be assumed to be
comprehensive. At a very high level, this document clarifies that
two types of review were intended and separates them for clarity and
restores the original (but so far unobserved) default for actions
when code point derived properties change. For this reason, this
document effectively provides a replacement for Section 5.1 of RFC
5892 and adds or changes some material needed to have the replacement
be clear or make better sense.
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Changes or clarifications that may be considered important include:
o Separated the new Unicode version review into two explicit parts
and provided for different review methods and, potentially,
asynchronous outcomes.
o Specified a review team, not a single expert, for the code point
review.
o Eliminated the de facto requirement for the (formerly single)
Designated Expert to be the same person as the IAB's Liaison to
the Unicode Consortium but called out the importance of
coordination.
o Created an explicit provision for an "under review" entry in the
IANA tables so that, if there is ever again a need to tell the
community to wait until the IETF sorts things out, that will be
about selected potentially problematic code points and not whole
Unicode versions.
o In part because Unicode is now on a regular one-year cycle rather
than producing major and minor versions as needed, to avoid
overloading the IETF's i18n resources, and to avoid generating and
storing IANA tables for trivial changes (e.g., the single new code
point in Unicode 12.1), the review procedure is applied only to
major versions of Unicode unless exceptional circumstances arise
and are identified.
Appendix B. Background and Rationale for Expert Review Procedure for
New Code Point Analysis
The Expert Review for New Code Point Analysis provided for above is
somewhat unusual compared to the examples presented in the Guidelines
for Writing IANA Considerations [RFC8126]. This appendix provides an
explanation of that choice and the background for it.
Development of specifications to support use of languages and writing
systems other than English (and Latin Script) -- so-called
"internationalization" or "i18n" -- has always been problematic in
the IETF, especially when requirements go beyond simple coding of
characters (e.g., RFC 3629 [RFC3629]) or simple identification of
languages (e.g., RFC 3282 [RFC3282] and the earlier RFC 1766
[RFC1766]). A good deal of specialized knowledge is required,
knowledge that comes from multiple fields and that requires multiple
perspectives. The work is not obviously more complex than routing,
especially if one assumes that routing work requires a solid
foundation in graph theory or network optimization, or than security
and cryptography, but people working in those areas are drawn to the
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IETF and people from the fields that bear on internationalization
typically are not.
One result is that we have several times thought we understood a
problem, generated a specification or set of specifications, and then
been surprised when unanticipated (by the IETF) issues arose and we
needed to go back and at least tune and often revise. The language
tag work that started with RFC 1766 is a good example of this:
broader considerations and requirements led to later work and a much
more complex and finer-grained system [RFC5646]
Work on IDNs further increased the difficulties because many of the
decisions that led to the current version of IDNA require
understanding the DNS and its constraints and, to at least some
extent, the commercial market in domain names including various ICANN
efforts.
The net result of these factors is that it is extremely unlikely that
the IESG will ever find an Expert Reviewer whose knowledge and
understanding will include everything that is required.
Consequently, Section 8 and other discussions in this document
specify a review team with the expectation that the members of the
team will, together, have have a broad enough perspective, collection
of expertise, and access to information and community to consult, so
as to be able to do a review and make consensus recommendations that
will serve the Internet well. While we anticipate that the team will
have one or more leaders, this differs from the suggestions in
Section 5.2 of the Guidelines for Writing IANA Considerations
[RFC8126] by not leaving whether or not a team exists or how it is
consulted to the discretion of the designated expert nor is the
expert solely accountable to the community. A team that contains
multiple perspectives is required, the team members are accountable
as a group, and any non-trivial recommendations require team
consensus. This also differs from the common practice in the IETF of
"review teams" from which a single member is selected to perform a
review: the principle for these reviews is team effort.
Appendix C. Change Log
RFC Editor: Please remove this appendix before publication.
C.1. Changes from version -00 (2019-06-12) to -01
o Added a note about the relationship to draft-klensin-idna-
rfc5891bis.
o Adjusted references per discussion with RFC Editor.
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o Minor editorial corrections and improvements.
C.2. Changes from version -01 (2019-07-06) to -02
o Removed an unnecessary reference and a duplicate one.
C.3. Changes from version -02 (2019-07-22) to -03
o Addition of text to Section 3 to clarify IESG responsibilities.
o Very small editorial changes in response to AD review.
C.4. Changes from version -03 (2019-08-29) to -04
o Added Appendix B to describe the reasoning and details of the
review team for New Code Point Analysis and slightly updated the
IANA Considerations section to point to it.
o Corrections for editorial problems identified after IETF Last
Call.
Authors' Addresses
John C Klensin
1770 Massachusetts Ave, Ste 322
Cambridge, MA 02140
USA
Phone: +1 617 245 1457
Email: john-ietf@jck.com
Patrik Faltstrom
Netnod
Franzengatan 5
Stockholm 112 51
Sweden
Phone: +46 70 6059051
Email: paf@netnod.se
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