From: Lisa Moore To: Vint Cerf Cc:emuller@adobe.com, idna-update@alvestrand.no, Lisa Dusseault , markdavis@google.com Date: 12/07/2009 08:46 PM Subject: UTC Response to "Letter to Unicode Technical Committee on IDNA2008" Dear Vint, The UTC appreciates the difficulty for users of IDNs, the registries,and all involved if lowercase sharp s (Latin Small Letter Sharp S (U+00DF)) and small final sigma (Greek Small Letter Final Sigma (U+03C2)), in particular, are mapped to other characters. As you know, our concerns are compatibility and potential security issues. However, based on the many ongoing dicussions and much thought, the UTC would not be opposed to have lowercase sharp s, final sigma, and even joiner and non-joiner be valid and not mapped, as long as there can be policies in place for a transition period (of say 5 years) that will manage the expected compatibility issues. The key for us is having policies for a well-managed transition with sufficient time for browser and other application upgrades. Without such policies in place, we would favor continuing the IDNA2003 treatment of the four above-mentioned characters. Best regards, Lisa Moore Chair, Unicode Technical Committee Vint Cerf wrote on 11/28/2009 01:57:17 PM: > > > > > > A prompt response would be much appreciated considering we have > > delayed reporting the results of the IETF LAST CALL to the Internet > > Engineering Steering Group while this matter is debated. > > > > Sincerely, > > > > Vinton Cerf > > Chairman, IDNABIS Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force .