Dear Edward, On Fri, Nov 24, 2023 at 10:03:15AM +0100, Edward Shryane via db-wg wrote:
Currently the RIPE database only allows a subset of ASCII characters in the "org-name:", "person:" and "role:" attributes, for a few reasons including:
* These attributes are also a look-up key and the Whois protocol does not allow specifying character sets in queries. * RPSL names are ASCII according to RFC2622 * Using a normalised name makes the object easier to query * Reading a normalised name is easier to interpret
However there are some drawbacks to forcing names to only use a subset of ASCII characters:
* Organisations, roles and persons cannot use their actual name if it includes characters outside this subset. * Normalisation is not standard, but is an interpretation done by each maintainer, e.g. characters could be excluded or converted in different ways.
The above two points are key in making the RIPE database useful and accessible to everyone, I too would love to see those points addressed.
Since we support the Latin-1 character set in the RIPE database, I propose we also allow non-ASCII Latin-1 characters in these attributes.
Querying for a name can be done either using the latin-1 characters (proposed) or a normalised, ASCII representation (currently). The normalised version will be generated by Whois and stored in a database index for querying. The primary key will also be generated from the normalised version.
Please let me know your feedback.
Wouldn't it be an opportune time to support UTF-8 instead of LATIN-1? As I understand it, through the use of UTF-8 more languages could be supported. UTF-8 seems to be the preferred character encoding in any new IETF work (for good reason). Have the effects of LATIN-1 on downstream applications such as NRTM v3 and NRTM v4 been considered? You indicate that LATIN-1 already is supported in the RIPE database, so I imagine you and the team already deliberated on the pro's and con's of UTF-8 vs LATIN-1; and as such concluded with this particular recommendation. I just wanted to make sure to raise these questions. :-) Some interesting reading material on UTF-8 https://utf8everywhere.org/ Kind regards, Job