Hi,

On Thu, Jun 26, 2025 at 08:37:56AM -0500, Gihan Dias wrote:
Could anyone point me at a description of how xn-- was chosen for the prefix for idn domains, and how we could register a similar prefix for another application?

I'm not sure whether this strictly answers the question you were trying to ask, 
but https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/idn/E75mJULaEHFGH8_V8qJN-glLcfg/ 
gives you the rules for how the selection was to be performed and what the 
result was from IANA.

I dimly recalled an idea to create a protocol parameters registry for 
[a-z][a-z]-- label prefixes in the DNS when we were doing IDNABIS or PRECIS (I 
forget which); but I did a quick scan of the IANA index for this stuff and 
didn't find one.  That doesn't mean it's not there, but I suspect the 
reservation of those characters is exclusively in the RFCs.  I suspect to get a 
similar kind of reservation, you'd need a pretty compelling case.  In-band 
signalling like this for applications is in general a fairly crummy option 
(though maybe the only one available, as in the case of IDNA), and I think 
mutliplying the occasions on which the A-label form of stuff will inevitably be 
exposed to users is bound to attract some opposition.

Best regards,

A

--
Andrew Sullivan
[email protected]
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