[arabic-vip] Initial list of issues and questions

[Andrew Sullivan]

Dear colleagues,

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 11:58:50AM +0430, Siavash Shahshahani wrote:
> Regarding the presence of digits in TLD I got conflicting results:
> 1. I asked a couple of registry operators, both said that the only
> restriction (for ASCII) is that the TLD not start with a digit. But this
> may be from the older version guidebook because:
> 2. In the new Guidebook(redlined version), Module 2, p.2-11, article
> 1.2.1, it says that ASCII label must consist entirely of letters. Also on
> page 2-12, article 2.1.5, it says that all characters within the label must
> have the same directional property (thus eliminating Hindi-Arabic digits
> which are L-to-R within the R-to-L script).

There is an attempt at the IETF to clarify the rules from RFC1123 on
this subject.  (One reading of RFC 1123 is that it actually makes all
IDN TLDs, including the ones actually in the root, against the rules.
I don't personally share that reading, but it is a position some have
taken.)  The draft is at
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-liman-tld-names-05.

That draft says that U-labels for the top level may contain only code
points of the following General Categories: Ll, Lo, Lm, Mn.  That
would exclude digits at the top level, so perhaps that particular
problem isn't one we need to worry about for TLDs.  The draft has not
been approved yet, though, and I don't know in the end whether it will
be.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com