3 -- internationalized domain name toolkit --
5 Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC)
8 Table of contents of this file:
11 2. Directory structure of this distribution
13 4. Contact information
15 See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions.
16 See the file NEWS for a list of major changes in the current release.
21 idnkit, which was originally known as mDNkit, is a toolkit for handling
22 internationalized domain names. To handle such names, the following
23 features are required:
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).
34 Name preparation of domain names before converting to
35 IDN encoding. Basically this is a normalization process
38 These conversion/nameprep processes to domain names have to be
39 performed before they are sent to DNS servers. And since the
40 processed domain names (in IDN encoding) consist of only legal ASCII
41 characters, no changes are required to DNS servers.
43 idnkit provides several ways for adding these features.
45 This kit consists of following components.
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.
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
60 libidnkitlite is lightweight version of libidnkit. It assumes
61 local encoding is UTF-8 so that it never uses iconv().
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.
68 + command which adds IDN feature dynamically to unix applications
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.
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.
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.
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.
92 2. Directory structure of this distribution
94 Below is a directory structure of this distribution with some
95 important files and their brief description.
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
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
112 | +bind9/ BIND9 patch
114 | +idnconv/ source for idnconv command
115 | +runidn/ source for runidn command
117 +wsock/ source for IDN wrapper
122 We've had successful builds on the following systems:
124 -------------------------------------------------------------------
125 OS iconv library configure options
126 ===================================================================
127 FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE GNU libiconv --with-libiconv
129 -------------------------------------------------------------------
130 Red Hat Linux 7.3 standard library none
132 -------------------------------------------------------------------
133 Solaris 9 standard library none
135 -------------------------------------------------------------------
137 The latest information about supported/unsupported systems will be
138 found at the mdnkit FAQ page linked from:
140 http://www.nic.ad.jp/en/idn/
143 4. Contact information
147 http://www.nic.ad.jp/en/idn/
149 for the latest news about this kit.
150 Bug reports and comments on this kit should be sent to
152 mdnkit-bugs@nic.ad.jp
159 ; Id: README,v 1.1 2003/06/04 00:24:58 marka Exp