Network Working Group C. Newman Internet-Draft Sun Microsystems Expires: January 13, 2005 July 15, 2004 Internet Application Protocol Collation Registry draft-newman-i18n-comparator-02.txt Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on January 13, 2005. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved. Abstract Many Internet application protocols include string-based lookup, searching, or sorting operations. However the problem space for searching and sorting international strings is large, not fully explored, and is outside the area of expertise for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Rather than attempt to solve such a large problem, this specification creates an abstraction framework so that application protocols can precisely identify a comparison function and the repertoire of comparison functions can be extended in the future. Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1 Conventions Used in this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Collation Definition and Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Collation Name Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. Collation Specification Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5. Application Protocol Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 6. Initial Collations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6.1 Octet Collation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6.2 ASCII Numeric Collation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6.3 ASCII Casemap Collation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6.4 Nameprep Collation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6.5 Basic Collation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 7. Use by ACAP and Sieve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 8.1 Collation Registration Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 8.2 Collation Registration Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 8.3 Octet Collation Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 8.4 ASCII Numeric Collation Registration . . . . . . . . . . . 16 8.5 Legacy English Casemap Collation Registration . . . . . . 16 8.6 English Casemap Collation Registration . . . . . . . . . . 16 8.7 Nameprep Collation Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 8.8 Basic Collation Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 8.9 Basic Accent Sensitive Match Collation Registration . . . 18 8.10 Basic Case Sensitive Match Collation Registration . . . 18 8.11 Structure of Collation Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 8.12 Example Initial Registry Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 9. DTD for Collation Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 10. Guidelines for Expert Reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 11. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 12. Open Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 13. Changes From -01 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 14. Changes From -00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 15. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 15.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 15.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . 24 Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 1. Introduction The ACAP [11] specification introduced the concept of a comparator (which we call collation in this document), but failed to create an IANA registry. With the introduction of stringprep [6] and the Unicode Collation Algorithm [8], it is now time to create that registry and populate it with some initial values appropriate for an international community. This specification replaces and generalizes the definition of a comparator in ACAP and creates a collation registry. 1.1 Conventions Used in this Document The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", and "MAY" in this document are to be interpreted as defined in "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels" [1]. The attribute syntax specifications use the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) [2] notation including the core rules defined in Appendix A. This also inherits ABNF rules from Language Tags [5]. 2. Collation Definition and Purpose A collation is a named function which takes two arbitrary length octet strings (encoded in UTF-8 [3] for collations which operate on characters) as input and can be used to perform one or more of three basic comparison operations: equality test, substring match and ordering test. Collations provide a multi-protocol abstraction layer for comparison functions so the details of a particular comparison operation can be specified by someone with appropriate expertise independent of the application protocol that consumes that collation. This is similar to the way a charset [14] separates the details of octet to character mapping from a protocol specification such as MIME [9] or the way SASL [10] separates the details of an authentication mechanism from a protocol specification such as ACAP [11]. Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 Here a small diagram to help illustrate the value of this abstraction layer: +-----------------+ | Octet | +-------------------+ +--| Collation Spec | | IMAP i18n SEARCH |--+ | +-----------------+ +-------------------+ | +-------------+ | +-----------------+ +--| Collation |--+--| A stringprep | +-------------------+ | | Registry | | | Collation Spec | | ACAP i18n SEARCH |--+ +-------------+ | +-----------------+ +-------------------+ | +-----------------+ | | locale-specific | +--| Collation Spec | +-----------------+ Thus IMAP, ACAP and future application protocols with international search capability simply specify how to interface to the collation registry instead of each protocol spec having to specify all the collations it supports. One component of a collation is a canonicalization function which can be pre-applied to single strings and may enhance the performance of subsequent comparison operations. Normally, this is an implementation detail of collations, but at times it may be useful for an application protocol to expose collation canonicalization over protocol. Collation canonicalization can range from an identity mapping (e.g., the i;octet collation) to a mapping which makes the string unreadable to a human (e.g., the basic collation). 3. Collation Name Syntax The collation name itself is a single US-ASCII string beginning with a letter and made up of letters, digits, or one of the following 4 symbols: "-", ";", "=" or ".". The name MUST NOT be longer than 254 characters. collation-char = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / ";" / "=" / "." collation-name = ALPHA *253collation-char The string a client uses to select a collation MAY contain a wildcard ("*") character which matches zero or more collation-chars. Wildcard characters MUST NOT be adjacent. Clients which support disconnected operation SHOULD NOT use wildcards to select a collation, but clients which provide collation operations only when connected to the server MAY use wildcards. If the wildcard string matches multiple collations, the server SHOULD select the collation with the broadest Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 scope (preferably international scope), the most recent table versions and the greatest number of supported operations. A single wildcard character ("*") refers to the application protocol collation behavior that would occur if no explicit negotiation were used. When used as a protocol element for ordering, the collation name MAY be prefixed by either "+" or "-" to explicitly specify an ordering direction. As mentioned previously, "+" has no effect on the ordering function, while "-" negates the result of the ordering function. In general, collation-order is used when a client requests a collation, and collation-sel is used with the server informs the client of the selected collation. collation-wild = ("*" / (ALPHA ["*"])) *(collation-char ["*"]) ; MUST NOT exceed 255 characters total collation-sel = ["+" / "-"] collation-name collation-order = ["+" / "-"] collation-wild Some protocols are designed to use URIs to refer to collations rather than simple tokens. A special section of the IANA web page is reserved for such usage. The "collation-uri" form is used to refer to a specific IANA registry entry for a specific named collation (the collation registration may not actually be present if it is experimental). The "collation-auri" form is an abstract name for an ordering, a comparator pattern or a vendor private comparator. collation-uri = "http://www.iana.org/assignments/collation/" collation-name ".xml" collation-auri = ( "http://www.iana.org/assignments/collation/" collation-order [".xml"]) / other-uri other-uri = absoluteURI ; excluding the IANA collation namespace. While this specification makes no absolute requirements on the structure of collation names, naming consistency is important, so the following initial guidelines are provided. Collation names with an international audience typically begin with "i;". Collation names intended for a particular language or locale typically begin with a language tag [5] followed by a ";". After the first ";" is normally the name of the general collation algorithm followed by a series of algorithm modifications separated by the ";" delimiter. Parameterized modifications will use "=" to delimit the parameter from the value. The version numbers of any lookup tables Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 used by the algorithm SHOULD be present as parameterized modifications. Collation names of the form *;vnd-domain.com;* are reserved for vendor-specific collations created by the owner of the domain name following the "vnd-" prefix. Registration of such collations (or the name space as a whole) with intended use of "Vendor" is encouraged when a public specification or open-source implementation is available, but is not required. 4. Collation Specification Requirements A collation specification MUST state which of the three basic functions are supported (equality, substring, ordering) and how to perform each of the supported functions on any two input octet-strings including empty strings. Given a collation with a specific name, and any two fixed input strings, the result MUST be the same. The collation specification MUST state whether the collation operates on raw octets or on characters (in which case the UTF-8 charset is presumed). Collations MUST be transitive. A collation specification MUST describe the internal canonicalization algorithm. This algorithm can be applied to individual strings and the result strings can be stored to potentially optimize future comparison operations. A collation MAY specify that the canonicalization algorithm is the identity function. The output of the canonicalization algorithm MAY have no meaning to a human. Collations which use more than one customizable lookup table in a documented format MUST assign numbers to the tables they use. This permits an application protocol command to access the tables used by a server collation. o The equality function always returns "match" or "no-match" when supplied valid input and MAY return "error" if the input strings are not valid UTF-8 strings or violate other collation constraints. o The substring matching function determines if the first string is a substring of the second string. A collation which supports substring matching will automatically support the two special cases of substring matching: prefix and suffix matching if those special cases are supported by the application protocol. It returns "match" or "no-match" when supplied valid input and returns "error" when supplied invalid input. o The ordering function determines how two octet strings are ordered. It returns "-1" if the first string is listed before the second string according to the collation, "+1" if the second string is listed before the first string, and "0" if the two strings are equal. If the order of the two strings is reversed, Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 the result of the ordering function of the collation MUST be negated. In general, collations SHOULD NOT return "0" unless the two octet sequences are identical. Since ordering is normally used to sort a list of items, "error" is not a useful return value from the ordering function. Strings with errors that prevent the sorting algorithm from functioning correctly should sort to the end of the list. Thus if the first string is invalid UTF-8 while the second string is valid, the result will be "+1". If the second string is invalid UTF-8 while the first string is valid, the result will be "-1". If the collation is character-based, and both strings are invalid UTF-8, the result SHOULD match the result from the "i;octet" collation. When the collation is used with a "+" prefix, the behavior is the same as when used with no prefix. When the collation is used with a "-" prefix, results which would be "+1" are instead "-1" and results which would be "-1" are instead "+1". Unless otherwise specified by the collation or application protocol, a NULL string (as opposed to an empty string) is equal only to another NULL string, a NULL string is not a substring of any other string, and a NULL string sorts to a position after all non-NULL strings, but before strings which generate errors. Some application protocols will permit the use of multi-value attributes with a collation. This paragraph describes the rules that apply unless otherwise specified by the collation or application protocol. The equality and substring collation algorithms will be iterated over each pair of single values from the two inputs. If any combination produces an error, the result is an error. Otherwise, if any combination produces a "match", the result is a match. Otherwise the result is "no-match". For the ordering function, the smallest ordinal octet string from the first set of values is compared to the smallest ordinal octet string from the second set of values. Application protocols MAY return position information for substring matches. If this is done, the position information MUST include both the starting offset and the ending offset in the string. This is important because more sophisticated collations can match strings of unequal length (for example, a pre-composed accented character will match a decomposed accented character). Collation specifications intended for common use are expected to reference standards from standards bodies with significant experience dealing with the details of international character sets. Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 5. Application Protocol Requirements An application protocol which offers searching, substring matching and/or sorting and permits the use of characters outside the US-ASCII charset needs to consider the following requirements and issues: The protocol MUST provide a mechanism for the client to select the collation to use with equality matching, substring matching and ordering. The protocol MUST specify how comparisons behave in the absence of an explicit collation negotiation or when a collation negotiation of "*" is used. The protocol MAY specify that the default collation used in such circumstances is sensitive to server configuration. The protocol SHOULD provide a way to list available collations matching a given wildcard pattern or patterns. If the protocol provides positional information for the results of a substring match, that positional information MUST fully specify the substring in the result that matches independent of the length of the search string. For example, returning both the starting and ending offset of the match would suffice, as would the starting offset and a length. Returning just the starting offset is not acceptable. This rule is necessary because advanced collations can treat strings of different lengths as equal (for example, pre-composed and decomposed accented characters). If the protocol permits the use of collations on stored character data which is not encoded with the UTF-8 charset, then the protocol specification has to describe relevant issues of the conversion. Details to consider include how to handle unknown charsets, any charsets which are mandatory-to-implement, any issues with byte-order that might apply, and any transfer encodings which need to be supported. If the protocol provides a canonicalization function for strings, then use of collations MAY be appropriate for that function. If the protocol supports disconnected clients, then a mechanism for the client to precisely replicate the server's collation algorithm is likely desirable. Thus the protocol MAY wish to provide a command to fetch lookup tables used by charset conversions and collations. The protocol specification should consider assigning protocol error codes for the following circumstances: o The client requests the use of a collation by name or pattern, but no implemented collation matches that pattern. Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 8] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 o The client attempts to use a collation for a function that is not supported by that collation. For example, attempting to use the "i;ascii-numeric" collation for a substring matching function. o The client uses an equality or substring matching collation and the result is an error. It may be appropriate to distinguish between the two input strings, particularly when one is supplied by the client and one is stored by the server. It might also be appropriate to distinguish the specific case of an invalid UTF-8 string. If the protocol permits the use of a collation with data structures beyond those described in this specification (octet strings, NULL string, array of octet strings), the protocol MUST describe the default behavior for a collation with that data structure. 6. Initial Collations This section describes an initial set of collations for the collation registry. 6.1 Octet Collation The "i;octet" collation is a simple and fast collation intended for use on binary octet strings rather than on character data. It never returns an "error" result. It provides equality, substring and ordering functions. The ordering algorithm is as follows: 1. If both strings are the empty string, return the result "0". 2. If the first string is empty and the second is not, return the result "-1". 3. If the second string is empty and the first is not, return the result "+1". 4. If both strings begin with the same octet value, remove the first octet from both strings and repeat this algorithm from step 1. 5. If the unsigned value (0 to 255) of the first octet of the first string is less than the unsigned value of the first octet of the second string, then return "-1". 6. If this step is reached, return "+1". This algorithm is roughly equivalent to the C library function memcmp with appropriate length checks added. The matching function returns "match" if the sorting algorithm would return "0". Otherwise the matching function returns "no-match". The substring function returns "match" if the first string is the empty string, or if there exists a substring of the second string of length equal to the length of the first string which would result in a "match" result from the equality function. Otherwise the substring Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 9] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 function returns "no-match". The associated canonicalization algorithm is the identity function. 6.2 ASCII Numeric Collation The "i;ascii-numeric" collation is a simple collation intended for use with arbitrary sized decimal numbers stored as octet strings of US-ASCII digits (0x30 to 0x39). It supports equality and ordering, but does not support the substring function. The algorithm is as follows: 1. If neither string begins with a digit, return "error" if matching, or the result of the "i;octet" collation for ordering. 2. If the first string begins with a digit and the second string does not, return "error" if matching and "-1" for ordering. 3. If the second string begins with a digit and the first string does not, return "error" if matching and "+1" for ordering. 4. Let "n" be the number of digits at the beginning of the first string, and "m" be the number of digits at the beginning of the second string. 5. If n is equal to m, return the result of the "i;octet" collation. 6. If n is greater than m, prepend a string of "n - m" zeros to the second string and return the result of the "i;octet" collation. 7. If m is greater than n, prepend a string of "m - n" zeros to the first string and return the result of the "i;octet" collation. The associated canonicalization algorithm is to truncate the input string at the first non-digit character. 6.3 ASCII Casemap Collation The "en;ascii-casemap" collation is a simple collation intended for use with English language text in pure US-ASCII. It provides equality, substring and ordering functions. The algorithm first applies a canonicalization algorithm to both input strings which subtracts 32 (0x20) from all octet values between 97 (0x61) and 122 (0x7A) inclusive. The result of the collation is then the same as the result of the "i;octet" collation for the canonicalized strings. Care should be taken when using OS-supplied functions to implement this collation as this is not locale sensitive, but functions such as strcasecmp and toupper can be locale sensitive. For historical reasons, in the context of ACAP and Sieve, the name "i;ascii-casemap" is a synonym for this collation. 6.4 Nameprep Collation The "i;nameprep;v=1;uv=3.2" collation is an implementation of the Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 10] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 nameprep [7] specification based on normalization tables from Unicode version 3.2. This collation applies the nameprep canoncialization function to both input strings and then returns the result of the i;octet collation on the canonicalized strings. While this collation offers all three functions, the ordering function it provides is inadequate for use by the majority of the world. Version number 1 is applied to nameprep as specified in RFC 3491. If the nameprep specification is revised without any changes that would produce different results when given the same pair of input octet strings, then the version number will remain unchanged. The table numbers for tables used by nameprep are as follows: +--------------+-----------------------+ | Table Number | Table Name | +--------------+-----------------------+ | 1 | UnicodeData-3.2.0.txt | | 2 | Table B.1 | | 3 | Table B.2 | | 4 | Table C.1.2 | | 5 | Table C.2.2 | | 6 | Table C.3 | | 7 | Table C.4 | | 8 | Table C.5 | | 9 | Table C.6 | | 10 | Table C.7 | | 11 | Table C.8 | | 12 | Table C.9 | +--------------+-----------------------+ 6.5 Basic Collation The basic collation is intended to provide tolerable results for a number of languages for all three functions (equality, substring and ordering) so it is suitable as a mandatory-to-implement collation for protocols which include ordering support. The ordering function of the basic collation is the Unicode Collation Algorithm [8] version 9 (UCAv9). The equality and substring functions are created as described in UCAv9 section 8. While that section is informative to UCAv9, it is normative to this collation specification. This collation is based on Unicode version 3.2, with the following tables relevant: Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 11] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 1. For the normalization step, is used. Column 5 is used to determine the canonical decomposition, while column 3 contains the canonical combining classes necessary to attain canonical order. 2. The table of characters which require a logical order exception is a subset of the table in and is included here: 0E40..0E44 ; Logical_Order_Exception # Lo [5] THAI CHARACTER SARA E..THAI CHARACTER SARA AI MAIMALAI 0EC0..0EC4 ; Logical_Order_Exception # Lo [5] LAO VOWEL SIGN E..LAO VOWEL SIGN AI # Total code points: 10 3. The table used to translate normalized code points to a sort key is . UCAv9 includes a number of configurable parameters and steps labelled as potentially optional. The following list summarizes the defaults used by this collation: o The logical order exception step is mandatory by default to support the largest number of languages. o Steps 2.1.1 to 2.1.3 are mandatory as the repertoire of the basic collation is intended to be large. o The second level in the sort key is evaluated forwards by default. o The variable weighting uses the "non-ignorable" option by default. o The semi-stable option is not used by default. o Support for exactly three levels of collation is the default behavior. o No preprocessing step is used by the basic collation prior to applying the UCAv9 algorithm. Note that an application protocol specification MAY require pre-processing prior to the use of any collations. o The equality and substring algorithms exclude differences at level 2 and 3 by default (thus it is case-insensitive and ignores accentual distinctions. o The equality and substring algorithms use the "Whole Characters Only" feature described in UCAv9 section 8 by default. The exact collation name with these defaults is "i;basic;uca=3.1.1;uv=3.2". When a specification states that the basic collation is mandatory-to-implement, only this specific name is mandatory-to-implement. Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 12] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 In order to allow modification of the optional behaviors, the following ABNF is used for variations of the basic collation: basic-collation = ("i" / Language-Tag) ";basic;uca=3.1.1;uv=3.2" [";match=accent" / ";match=case"] [";tailor=" 1*collation-char ] If multiple modifiers appear, they MUST appear in the order described above. The modifiers have the following meanings: match=accent Both the first and second levels of the sort keys are considered relevant to the equality and substring operations (rather than the default of first level only). This makes the matching functions sensitive to accentual distinctions. match=case The first three levels of sort keys are considered relevant to the equality and substring operations. This makes the matching functions sensitive to both case and accentual distinctions. The default weighting option is "non-ignorable". The "semi-stable" sort key option is not used by default. The canonicalization algorithm associated with this collation is the output of step 3 of the UCAv9 algorithm (described in section 4.3 of the UCA specification). This canonicalization is not suitable for human consumption. Finally, the UCAv9 algorithm permits the "allkeys" table to be tailored to a language. People who make quality tailorings are encouraged to register those tailorings using the collation registry. Tailoring names beginning with "x" are reserved for experimental use, are treated as "Limited use" and MUST NOT match wildcards if any registered collation is available that does match. 7. Use by ACAP and Sieve Both ACAP [11] and Sieve [15] are standards track specifications which used collations prior to the creation of this specification and registry. Those standards do not meet all the application protocol requirements described in Section 5. For backwards compatibility, those protocols use the "i;ascii-casemap" instead of "en;ascii-casemap". 8. IANA Considerations 8.1 Collation Registration Procedure IANA will create a mailing list collation@iana.org which can be used Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 13] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 for public discussion of collation proposals prior to registration. Use of the mailing list is encouraged but not required. The actual registration procedure will not begin until the completed registration template is sent to iana@iana.org. The IESG will appoint a designated expert who will monitor the collation@iana.org mailing list and review registrations forwarded from IANA. The designated expert is expected to tell IANA and the submitter of the registration within two weeks whether the registration is approved, approved with minor changes, or rejected with cause. When a registration is rejected with cause, it can be re-submitted if the concerns listed in the cause are addressed. Decisions made by the designated expert can be appealed to the IESG and subsequently follow the normal appeals procedure for IESG decisions. Collation registrations in a standards track, BCP or IESG-approved experimental RFC are owned by the IESG and changes to the registration follow normal procedures for updating such documents. Collation registrations in other RFCs are owned by the RFC author(s). Other collation registrations are owned by the individual(s) listed in the contact field of the registration and IANA will preserve this information. Changes to a registration MUST be approved by the owner. In the event the owner can't be contacted for a period of one month and a change is deemed necessary, the IESG MAY re-assign ownership to an appropriate party. 8.2 Collation Registration Template Registration of a collation is done by sending a well-formed XML document that validates with collationreg.dtd (Section 9). The registration MUST include a collation element that MAY include an "rfc=" attribute if the specification is in an RFC and MUST include a scope attribute of "i18n", "local" or "other" and an intendedUse attribute of "common", "limited", "vendor", or "deprecated". The collation element contains the other elements in the registration. The mandatory name element gives the precise name of the comparator. The mandatory title element give the title of the comparator. The mandatory functions element lists which of the three functions the comparator provides. The mandatory specification element describes where to find the specification, and MAY have a URI attribute. The submittor element provides an RFC 2822 email address for the person who submitted the registration. It is optional if the owner element contains an email address. The mandatory owner element contains either the four letters "IETF" or an email address of the owner of the registration. The optional version element is included when the registration is likely to be revised or has been revised in such a way that the results change for certain input strings. The optional UnicodeVersion element indicates the version number of the Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 14] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 UnicodeData file on which the collation is based. The optional UCAVersion element specifics the version of the Unicode Collation Algorithm on which the collation is based. The optional UCAMatchLevel element specifies the number of Unicode Collation Algorithm sort key levels used for the equality and substring operations. Here is a template for the registration: collation name technical title for collation equality order substring specification reference email address of owner or IETF email address of submittor 1 3.2 3.1.1 Be aware that future revisions of this specification may add additional function types, as well as additional XML attributes and values. Any system which automatically parses these XML documents MUST take this into account to preserve future compatibility. 8.3 Octet Collation Registration i;octet Octet equality order substring RFC XXXX IETF chris.newman@sun.com Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 15] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 8.4 ASCII Numeric Collation Registration i;ascii-numeric ASCII Numeric equality order RFC XXXX IETF chris.newman@sun.com 8.5 Legacy English Casemap Collation Registration i;ascii-casemap Legacy English Casemap equality order substring RFC XXXX IETF chris.newman@sun.com 8.6 English Casemap Collation Registration en;ascii-casemap English Casemap equality order substring RFC XXXX IETF chris.newman@sun.com Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 16] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 8.7 Nameprep Collation Registration i;nameprep;v=1;uv=3.2 Nameprep equality order substring RFC XXXX IETF chris.newman@sun.com 1 3.2 8.8 Basic Collation Registration i;basic;uca=3.1.1;uv=3.2 Basic equality order substring RFC XXXX IETF chris.newman@sun.com 3.2 3.1.1 1 Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 17] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 8.9 Basic Accent Sensitive Match Collation Registration i;basic;uca=3.1.1;uv=3.2;match=accent Basic Accent Sensitive Match equality order substring RFC XXXX IETF chris.newman@sun.com 3.2 3.1.1 2 8.10 Basic Case Sensitive Match Collation Registration i;basic;uca=3.1.1;uv=3.2;match=case Basic Case Sensitive Match equality order substring RFC XXXX IETF chris.newman@sun.com 3.2 3.1.1 3 8.11 Structure of Collation Registry Once the registration is approved, IANA will store each XML registration document in a URL of the form http://www.iana.org/assignments/collation/collation-name.xml where collation-name is the contents of the name element in the registration. Both the submittor and the designated expert is responsible for verifying that the XML is well-formed and complies with the DTD. In the future, it is hoped IANA will take over XML verification responsibility from the designated expert. IANA will also maintain a text summary of the registry under the name http://www.iana.org/assignments/collation/summary.txt. This summary is divided into four sections. The first section is for collations Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 18] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 intended for common use. This section is intended for collation registrations published in IESG approved RFCs or for locally scoped collations from the primary standards body for that locale. The designated expert is encouraged to reject collation registrations with an intended use of "common" if the expert believes it should be "limited", as it is desirable to keep the number of "common" registrations small and high quality. The second section is reserved for limited use collations. The third section is reserved for registered vendor specific collations. The final section is reserved for deprecated collations. 8.12 Example Initial Registry Summary The following is an example of how IANA might structure the initial registry summary.txt file: Collation Functions Scope Reference --------- --------- ----- --------- Common Use Collations: i;octet e, o, s Other [RFC XXXX] i;nameprep;v=1;uv=3.2 e, o, s i18n [RFC XXXX] i;basic;uca=3.1.1;uv=3.2 e, o, s i18n [RFC XXXX] i;basic;uca=3.1.1;uv=3.2;match=accent e, o, s i18n [RFC XXXX] i;basic;uca=3.1.1;uv=3.2;match=case e, o, s i18n [RFC XXXX] en;ascii-casemap e, o, s Local [RFC XXXX] Limited Use Collations: i;ascii-numeric e, o Other [RFC XXXX] Vendor Collations: Deprecated Collations: i;ascii-casemap e, o, s Local [RFC XXXX] References ---------- [RFC XXXX] Newman, C., "Internet Application Protocol Collation Registry", RFC XXXX, Sun Microsystems, October 2003. 9. DTD for Collation Registration Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 19] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 10. Guidelines for Expert Reviewer The expert reviewer appointed by the IESG has fairly broad latitude for this registry. While a number of collations are expected (particularly customizations of the basic collation for localized use), an explosion of collations (particularly common use collations) is not desirable for widespread interoperability. However, it is important for the expert reviewer to provide cause when rejecting a registration, and when possible to describe corrective action to permit the registration to proceed. The following table includes some example reasons to reject a registration with cause: Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 20] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 o The registration is not a well-formed XML document that follows the DTD. o The registration has intended use of "common", but there is no evidence the collation will be widely deployed so it should be listed as "limited". o The registration has intended use of "common", but is redundant with the functionality of a previously registered "common" collation. o The collation name fails to precisely identify the version numbers of relevant tables to use. o The registration fails to meet one of the "MUST" requirements in Section 4. o The collation name fails to meet the syntax in Section 3. o The collation specification referenced in the registration is vague or has optional features without a clear behavior specified. o The referenced specification does not adequately address security considerations specific to that collation. 11. Security Considerations Collations will normally be used with UTF-8 strings. Thus the security considerations for UTF-8 [3] and stringprep [6] also apply and are normative to this specification. 12. Open Issues 1. Is any Nameprep processing appropriate for the basic collation? Because a result of "0" from an ordering algorithm is undesirable, much of the nameprep processing is inappropriate. Furthermore, a result of "error" which is important for nameprep is generally inappropriate as an internal result in an ordering algorithm since it makes the results less intuitive. The sort key table also eliminates most problematic characters from consideration if the appropriate collation modifier is used. Finally, exact compatibility with the Unicode Collation Algorithm is deemed desirable by the author, as even the smallest variation may require implementation of largely duplicate code. However, this decision is outside my expertise, so I welcome alternate viewpoints. 2. The ICU implementation of the UCA algorithm includes additional algorithmic customizations such as the ability to be case-sensitive while at the same time being insensitive to accents. Should these customizations be added to this specification? 3. Should a format for customization data for the basic collation be defined so that disconnected clients might have the option of downloading that information? Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 21] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 4. Need to deal with the concept of "maybe" or "indeterminate" results from matching or ordering. See what LDAP does as an example. 5. Need to get agreement from IANA to provide persistent URLs (URNs are not sufficient) for the collation registry. 13. Changes From -01 Add IANA comment to open issues. Otherwise this is just a re-publish to keep the document alive. 14. Changes From -00 1. Replaced the term comparator with collation. While comparator is somewhat more precise because these abstract functions are used for matching as well as ordering, collation is the term used by other parts of the industry. Thus I have changed the name to collation for consistency. 2. Remove all modifiers to the basic collation except for the customization and the match rules. The other behavior modifications can be specified in a customization of the collation. 3. Use ";" instead of "-" as delimiter between parameters to make names more URL-ish. 4. Add URL form for comparator reference. 5. Switched registration template to use XML document. 6. Added a number of useful registration template elements related to the Unicode Collation Algorithm. 7. Switched language from "custom" to "tailor" to match UCA language for tailoring of the collation algorithm. 15. References 15.1 Normative References [1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [2] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997. [3] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646", RFC 2279, January 1998. [4] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998. [5] Alvestrand, H., "Tags for the Identification of Languages", BCP Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 22] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 47, RFC 3066, January 2001. [6] Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep")", RFC 3454, December 2002. [7] Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)", RFC 3491, March 2003. [8] Davis, M. and K. Whistler, "Unicode Collation Algorithm version 9", July 2002, . 15.2 Informative References [9] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996. [10] Myers, J., "Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)", RFC 2222, October 1997. [11] Newman, C. and J. Myers, "ACAP -- Application Configuration Access Protocol", RFC 2244, November 1997. [12] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 2434, October 1998. [13] Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April 2001. [14] Freed, N. and J. Postel, "IANA Charset Registration Procedures", BCP 19, RFC 2978, October 2000. [15] Showalter, T., "Sieve: A Mail Filtering Language", RFC 3028, January 2001. Author's Address Chris Newman Sun Microsystems 1050 Lakes Drive West Covina, CA 91790 US EMail: chris.newman@sun.com Newman Expires January 13, 2005 [Page 23] Internet-Draft Collation Registry July 2004 Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. 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