1 2 idnkit 3 -- internationalized domain name toolkit -- 4 version 1.0 5 Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC) 6 7 8Table of contents of this file: 9 10 1. Overview 11 2. Directory structure of this distribution 12 3. Supported systems 13 4. Contact information 14 15See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions. 16See the file NEWS for a list of major changes in the current release. 17 18 191. Overview 20 21idnkit, which was originally known as mDNkit, is a toolkit for handling 22internationalized domain names. To handle such names, the following 23features are required: 24 25 + Encoding conversion 26 Multilingualized domain names have to be converted from 27 the encoding application uses (local encoding) to 28 the encoding used for name resolution (IDN encoding), and 29 vice versa. Since domain names in IDN encoding just look 30 like good old ASCII domain names, the encoding is also known 31 as ASCII-compatible encoding (ACE). 32 33 + NAMEPREP 34 Name preparation of domain names before converting to 35 IDN encoding. Basically this is a normalization process 36 of the domain names. 37 38These conversion/nameprep processes to domain names have to be 39performed before they are sent to DNS servers. And since the 40processed domain names (in IDN encoding) consist of only legal ASCII 41characters, no changes are required to DNS servers. 42 43idnkit provides several ways for adding these features. 44 45This kit consists of following components. 46 47 + library for handling internationalized domain names 48 (libidnkit, libidnkitlite) 49 Those libraries implement encoding conversion and nameprep. 50 They provide easy-to-use APIs for handling internationalized 51 domain name in your applications. 52 53 Both libraries provide almost the same API. The difference 54 between them is that libidnkit internally uses iconv() function 55 to provide encoding conversion from UTF-8 to the local encoding 56 (such as iso-8859-1, usually determined by the current locale), 57 and vise versa. The idnconv and runidn commands in this toolkit 58 use libidnkit. 59 60 libidnkitlite is lightweight version of libidnkit. It assumes 61 local encoding is UTF-8 so that it never uses iconv(). 62 63 + codeset conversion utility (idnconv) 64 This command can convert internationalized domain name written 65 in local encoding (e.g. EUC-JP) to ACE or the opposite direction. 66 It can also convert named.conf and zone master files for BIND. 67 68 + command which adds IDN feature dynamically to unix applications 69 (runidn) 70 This command enables normal applications to handle 71 internationalized domain names by dynamically attaching special 72 library to them. See ``2. using runidn'' below. 73 74 Note that this command is not installed unless you specify the 75 `--enable-runidn' option to `configure'. See the file `INSTALL' 76 for more information about installation. 77 78 + patch for BIND9 that adds IDN capability 79 This patch adds IDN capability to BIND9. It adds encoding 80 conversion and nameprep features to `dig', `host' and 81 `nslookup'. With the patch, those commands become capable of 82 internationalized domain names. 83 84 + IDN wrapper for Windows applications 85 On windows, name resolving request is passed to WINSOCK DLL. So, 86 replacing WINSOCK DLL with multi-lingual domain name version 87 makes legacy windows applications compatible with IDN. This is 88 wrapper DLL for WINSOCK's name resolving functions. See 89 ``3. using IDN wrapper'' below. 90 91 922. Directory structure of this distribution 93 94Below is a directory structure of this distribution with some 95important files and their brief description. 96 97 +README this file 98 +README.ja .. in Japanese 99 +INSTALL compilation and installation instructions. 100 +INSTALL.ja .. in Japanese 101 +DISTFILES list of files in this distribution 102 +NEWS what's new in this version 103 +ChangeLog list of changes 104 +Makefile.in toplevel makefile template 105 +configure a `configure' script 106 +include/ 107 | +config.h.in template header file for configuration 108 | +idn/ header files for libidnkit and libindkitlite 109 | +mdn/ header files for backward compatibility 110 +lib/ source for libidnkit and libidnkitlite 111 +patch/ 112 | +bind9/ BIND9 patch 113 +tools/ 114 | +idnconv/ source for idnconv command 115 | +runidn/ source for runidn command 116 +util/ utilities 117 +wsock/ source for IDN wrapper 118 119 1203. Supported systems 121 122We've had successful builds on the following systems: 123 124 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 125 OS iconv library configure options 126 =================================================================== 127 FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE GNU libiconv --with-libiconv 128 for Intel 1.8 129 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 130 Red Hat Linux 7.3 standard library none 131 for Intel (glibc) 132 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 133 Solaris 9 standard library none 134 for Sparc (libc) 135 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 136 137The latest information about supported/unsupported systems will be 138found at the mdnkit FAQ page linked from: 139 140 http://www.nic.ad.jp/en/idn/ 141 142 1434. Contact information 144 145Please see 146 147 http://www.nic.ad.jp/en/idn/ 148 149for the latest news about this kit. 150Bug reports and comments on this kit should be sent to 151 152 mdnkit-bugs@nic.ad.jp 153and 154 idn-cmt@nic.ad.jp 155 156respectively. 157 158 159; Id: README,v 1.1 2003/06/04 00:24:58 marka Exp 160