FYI. This was posted on the IETF IMA mailing list earlier today. This comment from John Klensin below caught my attention: “ (1) I trust you are aware of the ICANN=-sponsored "Universal Acceptance" effort, which is covering some of this same ground. Personally, I believe they are seriously out in the weeds, doing a good deal of work on assumptions about the DNS and the EAI work that are just not valid for a number of technical reasons” Don- It would be good idea to reach out to John and seek clarification of his remarks. Thoughts? -Dennis On 10/14/16, 12:29 PM, "IMA on behalf of ima-request@ietf.org" <ima-bounces@ietf.org on behalf of ima-request@ietf.org> wrote: Send IMA mailing list submissions to ima@ietf.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ima or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to ima-request@ietf.org You can reach the person managing the list at ima-owner@ietf.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of IMA digest..." Today's Topics: 1. General issues and strategy (was: Re: Content Issues [ was: Internationalized Email Internet Draft]) (John C Klensin) 2. Re: [IETF] Internationalized Email Internet Draft (nalini.elkins@insidethestack.com) 3. Re: General issues and strategy (was: Re: Content Issues [ was: Internationalized Email Internet Draft]) (nalini.elkins@insidethestack.com) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2016 11:45:18 -0400 From: John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com> To: nalini.elkins@insidethestack.com, "HANSEN, TONY L" <tony@att.com>, ima@ietf.org Cc: Harish Chowdhary <harish@nixi.in>, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> Subject: [EAI] General issues and strategy (was: Re: Content Issues [ was: Internationalized Email Internet Draft]) Message-ID: <8B119C286A3CFDE08C598251@JcK-HP8200> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Nalini, Given your decision to go for separate threads, which I think is a good one, some general comments: --On Friday, October 14, 2016 13:30 +0000 nalini.elkins@insidethestack.com wrote: > John / Tony, > I am going to split your comments into separate threads so > that I can keep track of each. ? >... > Yes. ?I see your point. ? Let me say first the basic thing > that we are trying to do is to discuss the holistic user > experience of internationalized emails from an operational > point of view. ? In so doing, the co-mingling happened. ?We > could do a second draft for content issues or change the > abstract of this one to better state what our real goal is. > Secondly, as you guys know well, there are lots of other > issues with IDN, browser support, etc. ? What we were > actually hoping is that we could have a forum (perhaps like > DNSOps or v6Ops) where we could come together to define and > discuss such problems, move towards best practices (or work > arounds! Not that I like that, but it happens.) ? Because we > have not even started on problems that we see such as search > algorithm ranking of IDNs and so on. ? We were hoping that > others would step up to author such other drafts. A few very general comments about context. This might anticipate some future note from you, so I hope I can get it off quickly... (1) I trust you are aware of the ICANN=-sponsored "Universal Acceptance" effort, which is covering some of this same ground. Personally, I believe they are seriously out in the weeds, doing a good deal of work on assumptions about the DNS and the EAI work that are just not valid for a number of technical reasons, but it would be unfortunate to waste whatever cycles are associated with duplicative efforts. As far as I know, Don Holland is still lead; I think he is on the EAI list but am not sure. (2) I trust you are also aware that there is an IAB I18N program. It has been, again IMO, fairly unhealthy in the last couple of years, largely because the available cycles of the most active and expert people have disappeared into the IANA Transition activity. If you want a forum or workshop, they might be a good place to start. Ted Hardie is lead; I have no idea whether he is on the EAI list. (3) Despite the obvious interest and importance of this issue, I have observed very little actual energy in the IETF for dealing with it or i18n issues more generally. By the time the EAI WG got its documents out, there was little interest in specific work beyond "we just want this to work". By the time the PRECIS WG got its RFCs out, there was little general interest in careful review of documents (resulting in a need to start work on revisions almost immediately thereafter). AFAICT, the strongest and most general sentiment in the WG was "just tell me what to do so I don't need to understand or think about this". That is understandable, but not a good foundation for getting work done. The community has been completely unable to engage with the "non-decomposing character" issue that has paralyzed some important IDNA applications for a couple of years now (IMO, the LUCID BOF, supposedly addressed to that issue, did a good job of illustrating the more fundamental problems with IETF engagement, including a lengthy discussion of just how to spell Z?rich in English (or, for that matter, in various versions of German). (4) Even among those who were active in the EAI work, there has been, AFAICT, silence so far except from Tony and myself. I know that some are off chasing general equivalence of DNS names. I believe that effort shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the properties of the relevant data structures but it seems to be getting agenda time in Seoul (see "DNSBUNDLED" on Jari's "New Work in Seoul" BOF list). (5) You should also be sure you understand that many of the issues with non-ASCII identifiers, especially identifiers (5) If you want rapid deployment of fully-internationalized email messages, it is important that you understand that there were alternate hypotheses for how to get both the IDN and that work done. For IDNs, we could have changed the DNS and server matching algorithms (which might have permitted approximate matching and made a number of issues with comparison and normalization much easier) or we could have adopted an "above DNS" model which would have also helped with the matching and search issues. However, there was a great deal of pressure, some of it emotional and paralleling the comments about "English" in your draft, for "fast" and "in the DNS", and that got us the mappings, restrictions, and trick encoding of IDNA. Every bit of new evidence or pressure for synonymous labels and matching that is predictable given local language culture is an argument that we got it wrong and should have gone for one of the other approaches, probably a member of the "Above DNS" family. For EAI, there was a similar choice. We could have stuck with all-ASCII address local parts and focused on better use of encoded names (e.g., by making it clear that not copying a name phrase into a reply or to or from an address book was a very bad practice, encouraging address book lookups by the name phrase or equivalent as well as the address, etc., thereby saving a good many transition and interoperability problems. I note that was the solution adopted by the ITU, an organization with far more representation and influence from countries and people who speak English as a second language if at all, for a broad range of I19n issues. Instead, there was a strong commitment in the WG and those who pushed for it to have all-non-ASCII mailbox addresses and to phase out the encoded word approach. At least a significant fraction of the WG understood the likely (or certain) costs of that decision including slow deployment and interoperability issues that would likely limit EAI use to "within community" communications. If, at any point, you want to argue for discarding SMTPUTF8 and returning to an encoded word model, there are less difficult (but also less culturally and aesthetically attractive) ways to move forward. best, john (BTW, as a further illustration of the "too few people with spare cycles" problem, I'm writing this note rather than working on the current round of PRECIS revision drafts (and they are, in turn, holding up work in URNBIS) and am copying Peter, who I don't think is on the EAI list either, so he knows what is happening.) ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2016 15:56:55 +0000 (UTC) From: <nalini.elkins@insidethestack.com> To: "HANSEN, TONY L" <tony@att.com>, "ima@ietf.org" <ima@ietf.org> Subject: Re: [EAI] [IETF] Internationalized Email Internet Draft Message-ID: <1494946295.365614.1476460615866@mail.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Tony, >I?m not convinced that section 1.2 describes a real problem. People do this all the time today with various combinations of languages. Why is the combination of Russian and Chinese any >different? If you think it is, then please expand on the aspect that does make it more difficult. I think what we were thinking of is the actual difficulties involved in typing or user interface on a desktop. ?For example, if you are speaking in a particular language and don't have the associated keyboard for it, then you might have to bring up a virtual keyboard to type in a particular language. ?Then, you might have to set the language preference on your desktop. ? If you use a second language, then it becomes more complicated. ? So, you have two virtual keyboards + an actual physical keyboard? ?Hmm. I guess I am also assuming that in real life, you would actually be speaking both languages and not trying to do something like a "google translate" to read the message from the second language. ?Let me think how to rephrase this section. Also, I think we have to distinguish between mobile and desktop. ? On my cell phone, I easily go back and forth from, for example, my english keyboard, and emoji or bitmoji keyboard. ?So, I think that it would be easy enough to go from english to hindi to french and then back to insert some emoji's. ? Just thinking out loud about how this would actually work. ?(This is making me think that maybe I text too much! ?Why am I doing all this back and forth even now??) ? >I forwarded a number of nits to the authors. Thanks! Nalini? ??????????????? Tony Hansen ? From: IMA <ima-bounces@ietf.org> on behalf of Harish Chowdhary <harish@nixi.in> Reply-To: "harish@nixi.in" <harish@nixi.in> Date: Thursday, October 6, 2016 at 1:54 AM To: "ima@ietf.org" <ima@ietf.org> Subject: [EAI] [IETF] Internationalized Email Internet Draft ? Dear All, Greetings! We have just posted an INTERNET DRAFT? on deployment Issues of International Emails on IETF. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-elkchow-iea-deploy/?include_text=1 Here is a brief description of what we want to discuss during IETF 97 (Seoul,South Korea) International Email Addresses (IEA) are far from the global reality. The current de-facto language of the Internet is English.? Even today, many of the users of the Internet do not speak English as their primary language.? The next billion users of the Internet are likely to be even less familiar with English. IEA is probably the first application needed in a truly internationalized Internet.? The Email Address Internationalization (EAI) Working Group defined the RFCs to support internationalized email.? The time may now finally have come to develop best practices and to discuss the deployment challenges for IEA. Your feedback and suggestions are most welcome to make above cited draft inclusive of all the matters related to "Deployment of International Emails. We may further extend it to take up all the UA related issues. Hoping for your support. Thanks, Harish Chowdhary ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [NIXI is on Social-Media too. Kindly follow us at: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nixiindia & Twitter: @inregistry ] This e-mail is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies and the original message. 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URL: <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/ima/attachments/20161014/fe1d5496/a...> ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2016 16:28:56 +0000 (UTC) From: <nalini.elkins@insidethestack.com> To: John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>, "HANSEN, TONY L" <tony@att.com>, "ima@ietf.org" <ima@ietf.org> Cc: Harish Chowdhary <harish@nixi.in>, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> Subject: Re: [EAI] General issues and strategy (was: Re: Content Issues [ was: Internationalized Email Internet Draft]) Message-ID: <1130669068.355429.1476462536866@mail.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" John, --On Friday, October 14, 2016 13:30 +0000 nalini.elkins@insidethestack.com wrote: >> John / Tony, >> I am going to split your comments into separate threads so >> that I can keep track of each. ? >>... >> Yes. ?I see your point. ? Let me say first the basic thing >> that we are trying to do is to discuss the holistic user >> experience of internationalized emails from an operational >> point of view. ? In so doing, the co-mingling happened. ?We >> could do a second draft for content issues or change the >> abstract of this one to better state what our real goal is. >> Secondly, as you guys know well, there are lots of other >> issues with IDN, browser support, etc. ? What we were >> actually hoping is that we could have a forum (perhaps like >> DNSOps or v6Ops) where we could come together to define and >> discuss such problems, move towards best practices (or work > arounds! Not that I like that, but it happens.) ? Because we >> have not even started on problems that we see such as search >> algorithm ranking of IDNs and so on. ? We were hoping that >> others would step up to author such other drafts. >A few very general comments about context.? This might >anticipate some future note from you, so I hope I can get it off >quickly... >(1) I trust you are aware of the ICANN=-sponsored "Universal >Acceptance" effort, which is covering some of this same ground. >Personally, I believe they are seriously out in the weeds, doing >a good deal of work on assumptions about the DNS and the EAI >work that are just not valid for a number of technical reasons, >but it would be unfortunate to waste whatever cycles are >associated with duplicative efforts.? As far as I know, Don >Holland is still lead; I think he is on the EAI list but am not >sure. Yes. ?I am aware of this & want to get Don Holland involved. ?I somehow had the idea he would be in Seoul but maybe I am wrong. ?I think I will try to have a private conversation with him and Harish ahead of time. >(2) I trust you are also aware that there is an IAB I18N>program.? It has been, again IMO, fairly unhealthy in the last >couple of years, largely because the available cycles of the >most active and expert people have disappeared into the IANA >Transition activity.? If you want a forum or workshop, they >might be a good place to start.? Ted Hardie is lead; I have no >idea whether he is on the EAI list. I had a very brief conversation with Ted Hardie over email. ?I will contact him again. >(3) Despite the obvious interest and importance of this issue, I >have observed very little actual energy in the IETF for dealing >with it or i18n issues more generally.? By the time the EAI WG >got its documents out, there was little interest in specific >work beyond "we just want this to work".? By the time the PRECIS >WG got its RFCs out, there was little general interest in >careful review of documents (resulting in a need to start work >on revisions almost immediately thereafter).? AFAICT, the >strongest and most general sentiment in the WG was "just tell me >what to do so I don't need to understand or think about this". >That is understandable, but not a good foundation for getting >work done.? The community has been completely unable to engage >with the "non-decomposing character" issue that has paralyzed >some important IDNA applications for a couple of years now (IMO, >the LUCID BOF, supposedly addressed to that issue, did a good >job of illustrating the more fundamental problems with IETF >engagement, including a lengthy discussion of just how to spell >Z?rich in English (or, for that matter, in various versions of >German).? >(4) Even among those who were active in the EAI work, there has >been, AFAICT, silence so far except from Tony and myself.? I >know that some are off chasing general equivalence of DNS names. >I believe that effort shows a fundamental lack of understanding >of the properties of the relevant data structures but it seems >to be getting agenda time in Seoul (see "DNSBUNDLED" on Jari's >"New Work in Seoul" BOF list). Sure. ?I understand your frustration. ? Harish and I have been in touch with the community in Africa and Latin America as well, as of course, India. ? If you will, since this is more of a problem for the non-English speaking world, then those of us who actually speak languages other than English should step up to the plate and be responsible for doing work. ?One of the representatives for one of the communities has told me that they may fund someone to come to Seoul just to work on this project. We have also started a conversation with some of the OS / browser manufacturers - the Mozillas and Microsofts of the world. I want to get a core group of maybe 5 - 10 people from various communities and then people from the OS / browser world. ?It will take some time to get critical mass but as you say, the issue is very critical. ?That is definitely being seen at least in the non-Western parts of the world. ?(Sorry, I don't know if I am being somehow politically incorrect in phrasing this!) I hope that you and Tony can guide us. ?It will take us some time to come up to speed. ?It has definitely helped to do a proof of concept implementation. ?Harish and I conference call every week sometimes for two hours to discuss these issues. ? We have learned a lot in the past two months. ?Mostly based on problems that I have had! We appreciate very much your and Tony's efforts to get the WG and documents to this stage. ?But, now we need to work on implementation and migration issues. ? I hope you will be available to guide us. ?I am not thinking that we will expect you to be responsible for doing all the work. I was born in India. ?Many, many of the people in India do not (and never will) speak English. ? Two of the happiest years of my life were living at the edge of the bush in French speaking West Africa. ?Again, English was not widely spoken.? But, English is the de-facto language of the Internet. ?The next billion people on the Internet need access in local language. ? I think that at the IETF one thing that we can do is quietly and thoughtfully concentrate and work out the technical issues. ? That is our strength. ? It will take us some time to form a core group. ? My hope is that by IETF99, we will have enough people to do something interesting. >(5) You should also be sure you understand that many of the >issues with non-ASCII identifiers, especially identifiers Yes. ? Are there any RFCs or papers that you might point me to? >(5) If you want rapid deployment of fully-internationalized >email messages, it is important that you understand that there >were alternate hypotheses for how to get both the IDN and that >work done.? For IDNs, we could have changed the DNS and server >matching algorithms (which might have permitted approximate >matching and made a number of issues with comparison and >normalization much easier) or we could have adopted an "above >DNS" model which would have also helped with the matching and >search issues. However, there was a great deal of pressure, some >of it emotional and paralleling the comments about "English" in >your draft, for "fast" and "in the DNS", and that got us the >mappings, restrictions, and trick encoding of IDNA.? Every bit >of new evidence or pressure for synonymous labels and matching >that is predictable given local language culture is an argument >that we got it wrong and should have gone for one of the other >approaches, probably a member of the "Above DNS" family.? For >EAI, there was a similar choice.? We could have stuck with >all-ASCII address local parts and focused on better use of >encoded names (e.g., by making it clear that not copying a name >phrase into a reply or to or from an address book was a very bad >practice, encouraging address book lookups by the name phrase or >equivalent as well as the address, etc., thereby saving a good >many transition and interoperability problems.? I note that was >the solution adopted by the ITU, an organization with far more >representation and influence from countries and people who speak >English as a second language if at all, for a broad range of >I19n issues.? Instead, there was a strong commitment in the WG >and those who pushed for it to have all-non-ASCII mailbox >addresses and to phase out the encoded word approach.? At least >a significant fraction of the WG understood the likely (or >certain) costs of that decision including slow deployment and >interoperability issues that would likely limit EAI use to >"within community" communications.? If, at any point, you want >to argue for discarding SMTPUTF8 and returning to an encoded >word model, there are less difficult (but also less culturally >and aesthetically attractive) ways to move forward. This is very interesting. ?Let me think it over and we may want to discuss in our core group. ? We also need the people from DNS involved. ?Let me talk to a few people over there & pick their brains. best, ? john >(BTW, as a further illustration of the "too few people with >spare cycles" problem, I'm writing this note rather than working >on the current round of PRECIS revision drafts (and they are, in >turn, holding up work in URNBIS) and am copying Peter, who I >don't think is on the EAI list either, so he knows what is >happening.) John, thank you for everything you have done & for all your help with this. Nalini -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/ima/attachments/20161014/61d820b0/a...> ------------------------------ Subject: Digest Footer _______________________________________________ IMA mailing list IMA@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ima ------------------------------ End of IMA Digest, Vol 112, Issue 8 ***********************************