IRIs: Integration with IDN

IETF Internationalized Domain Name (idn) WG: Drafts now at IESG, most likely next step is IETF last call

Ideally, IRIs would be independent of IDN work. But:

1. RFC 2396 does not allow %hh in host names, and
2. IDN uses Ascii Compatible Encoding (ACE) rather than UTF-8

Current proposal: 'glue' draft to bridge syntax hole: draft-ietf-idn-uri-01.txt, upgrades RFC 2396

IRI: http://www.кгб.org => http://www.%D0%9A%D0%93%D0%91.org => www.zq--90adu.org

Pro: uniform, need code for IDN anyway, middle step just for the spec

Alternative: IRI: http://www.кгб.org => http://www.zq--90adu.org

Pro: Directly works on new infrastructure Con: Tedious conversion at wrong point, not uniform (mailto: not generic syntax,...)

Additional question: To what extent to enforce nameprep (proposal: advise, not enforce)