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Appendix A PR29 discussion

If you wish to experiment with a modified Unicode NFKC implementation according to the PR29 proposal, you may find the following bug report useful. However, I have not verified that the suggested modifications are correct. For reference, I’m including my response to the report as well.

From: Rick McGowan <rick@unicode.org>
Subject: Possible bug and status of PR 29 change(s)
To: bug-libidn@gnu.org
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 14:49:17 -0700

Hello. On behalf of the Unicode Consortium editorial committee, I would
like to find out more information about the PR 29 fixes, if any, and
functions in Libidn. Your implementation was listed in the text of PR29 as
needing investigation, so I am following up on several implementations.

The UTC has accepted the proposed fix to D2 as outlined in PR29, and a new
draft of UAX #15 has been issued.

I have looked at Libidn 0.5.8 (today), and there may still be a possible
bug in NFKC.java and nfkc.c.

------------------------------------------------------

1. In NFKC.java, this line in canonicalOrdering():

      if (i > 0 && (last_cc == 0 || last_cc != cc)) {

should perhaps be changed to:

      if (i > 0 && (last_cc == 0 || last_cc < cc)) {

but I'm not sure of the sense of this comparison.

------------------------------------------------------

2. In nfkc.c, function _g_utf8_normalize_wc() has this code:

	  if (i > 0 &&
	      (last_cc == 0 || last_cc != cc) &&
	      combine (wc_buffer[last_start], wc_buffer[i],
		       &wc_buffer[last_start]))
	    {

This appears to have the same bug as the current Python implementation (in
Python 2.3.4). The code should be checking, as per new rule D2 UAX #15
update, that the next combining character is the same or HIGHER than the
current one. It now checks to see if it's non-zero and not equal.

The above line(s) should perhaps be changed to:

	  if (i > 0 &&
	      (last_cc == 0 || last_cc < cc) &&
	      combine (wc_buffer[last_start], wc_buffer[i],
		       &wc_buffer[last_start]))
	    {

but I'm not sure of the sense of the comparison (< or > or <=?) here.

In the text of PR29, I will be marking Libidn as "needs change" and adding
the version number that I checked. If any further change is made, please
let me know the release version, and I'll update again.

Regards,
	Rick McGowan

From: Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>
Subject: Re: Possible bug and status of PR 29 change(s)
To: Rick McGowan <rick@unicode.org>
Cc: bug-libidn@gnu.org
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 09:47:47 +0200

Rick McGowan <rick@unicode.org> writes:

> Hello. On behalf of the Unicode Consortium editorial committee, I would
> like to find out more information about the PR 29 fixes, if any, and
> functions in Libidn. Your implementation was listed in the text of PR29 as
> needing investigation, so I am following up on several implementations.
>
> The UTC has accepted the proposed fix to D2 as outlined in PR29, and a new
> draft of UAX #15 has been issued.
>
> I have looked at Libidn 0.5.8 (today), and there may still be a possible
> bug in NFKC.java and nfkc.c.

Hello Rick.

I believe the current behavior is intentional.  Libidn do not aim to
implement latest-and-greatest NFKC, it aim to implement the NFKC
functionality required for StringPrep and IDN.  As you may know,
StringPrep/IDN reference Unicode 3.2.0, and explicitly says any later
changes (which I consider PR29 as) do not apply.

In fact, I believe that would I incorporate the changes suggested in
PR29, I would in fact be violating the IDN specifications.

Thanks for looking into the code and finding the place where the
change could be made.  I'll see if I can mention this in the manual
somewhere, for technically interested readers.

Regards,
Simon