Technical Summary
This document describes the changes between Unicode 6.0.0 and Unicode
12.0.0 in the context of IDNA2008. Some additions and changes have
been made in the Unicode Standard that affect the values produced by
the algorithm IDNA2008 specifies. IDNA2008 allows adding exceptions
to the algorithm for backward compatibility; however, this document
does not add any such exceptions. This document provides the
necessary tables to IANA to make its database consistent with Unicode
12.0.0.
To improve understanding, this document describes systems that are
being used as alternatives to those that conform to IDNA2008.
Working Group Summary
This is an AD-sponsored document and was not produced by a working group.
It received the usual Last Call treatment, including directorate reviews from
OPSDIR, GENART, and I18NDIR.
This document replaces draft-faltstrom-unicode11, which was intended to
take on the specified review and analysis for Unicode version 11, but
which did not get finished before Unicode version 12 was released and
before changes to the review process were documented in RFC 8753. There
was a good level of review of draft-faltstrom-unicode11, including
substantive review through the Internationalization Directorate (there
were also GenART and SecDir reviews), and those reviews serve this,
draft-faltstrom-unicode12, well.
It's important to keep in mind that the analysis that this document does
is highly specialized and that few IETF participants have the background
knowledge and skills to do that analysis. As a result, we expect few
substantive reviews, and the consensus is necessarily achieved very
narrowly. That said, the document and the analysis it provides is
critical to the stability of the IDNA2008 standards, to ensure that the
standard continues to align with current Unicode versions.
This document is a prerequisite for the review and analysis of Unicode
version 13.
Document Quality
Unicode is ubiquitous in terms of implementations.
The most obvious important review was one from I18NDIR, which
was done both early and recently on this document.
Personnel
Barry Leiba is the document shepherd.
Murray Kucherawy is the sponsoring area director.