[ietf-dkim] Internationalized domain names

[Paul Hoffman]

At 4:08 PM -0700 7/19/06, Douglas Otis wrote:
>On Jul 19, 2006, at 10:29 AM, Paul Hoffman wrote:
>
>>>
>>>Agreed.
>>>
>>>Calling this an ACE label which is identified by the "xn--" prefix 
>>>may avoid some of the confusion.
>>>
>>>This could also be written as:
>>>
>>>  Internationalized domain names MUST be converted using the
>>>  steps in section 4 of [RFC3490] into "ACE" labels using the
>>>  ToASCII function.
>>
>>No, that's wrong: only the labels that have non-LDH characters are 
>>converted. Section 4 in IDNA covers this correctly.
>
>Good point, but not exactly right either.

Please show *exactly* where the following is "not exactly right":
        Internationalized domain names MUST be converted using
        the  steps in section 4 of [RFC3490] using the ToASCII
        function.

>A term for international domain names encoded into ACE labels would 
>provide a useful reference, rather than calling this puny-code.

The proposed text does not use the term "puny-code".

>The '_' underscore character is also not one of the 37 
>case-insensitive LDH (letter, digit, or hyphen) characters either, 
>but the intent is not to include this label within this requirement.

Correct, and irrelevant.

>   While domain name encoding is specifically mentioned with the i= 
>parameter where there are essentially no character restrictions for 
>subdomains, this statement also applies to the d= tag as well.

Correct, and irrelevant. You cannot use "_" in labels in domain names 
in either i= or d=.

>Perhaps:
>
>  Internationalized domain names MUST be converted using the
>  steps in section 4 of [RFC3490] into "ACE" labels when
>  appropriate by applying the ToASCII function for "stored stings."
>  This requirement does not apply to the "_domainkey" label.

No. Changing a simple, correct statement into a confusing one with 
new terminology is a bad practice. Please stop.