Re: [bug-inetutils] Re: Internationalized domain names teaser

[Simon Josefsson <jas at extundo dot com>]

"Martin v. Löwis" <martin@v.loewis.de> writes:

> Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> Is anyone on the GNU Libc list aware of any API standardization in
>> this area?  Any thought or input on this is appreciated.
>
> I would suggest that hostnames should be considered to be encoded with
> the encoding of nl_langinfo(CODESET).

This is what libidn does (when the *locale* functions are used), btw.

> All routines taking hostnames should then apply IDNA to their
> parameters; those taking flags (e.g. getaddrinfo) should provide a
> flag to suppress IDNA.

Sounds simple enough.  But the IDNA specification says the following:

,----
| Because these resolver libraries today expect only domain names in
| ASCII, applications MUST prepare labels that are passed to the resolver
| library using the ToASCII operation. Labels received from the resolver
| library contain only ASCII characters; internationalized labels that
| cannot be represented directly in ASCII use the ACE form. ACE labels
| always include the ACE prefix.
`----

I think the IDNA specification gives poor recommendations in this
area, an area which doesn't even concern the IDNA protocol itself.