As first deliverable under the “Procedure to Develop and Maintain Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone With Respect to IDN Labels” [PDF, 772 KB] (the Procedure), ICANN is releasing for public comment version 1 of the Maximal Starting Repertoire (MSR-1). The contents of MSR-1 and the detailed rationale behind its development are described in “Maximal Starting Repertoire – MSR-1-Overview and Rationale” [PDF, 393 KB].

Instructions for Reviewers

The MSR is a subset of IDNA 2008 PVALID code points for Unicode 6.3 (latest version of the Unicode Standard). As stated in the Procedure, the code points included are not restricted for identifiers in Table 1 of UTS#39 and must not be used for writing an excluded script. The MSR was further adjusted by following the prescriptions of the Procedure [PDF, 772 KB] in eliminating code points not eligible for the root zone.

In very general terms, where the Integration Panel was not able to resolve the status of a code point, it has tended to retain it in the MSR, to allow Generation Panels to perform a more thorough review, which might perhaps justify the inclusion of such code points in the LGR .

As a result, the mere presence of a code point in the MSR does not indicate that the Integration Panel considers it acceptable for inclusion in the LGR . In contrast, the absence of a code point affirms that the Integration Panel has determined that the code point is not appropriate for the DNS root, or, in the case of certain scripts, the panel has decided to defer it to a future version of the MSR.

Reviewers of the MSR are encouraged to carefully review the MSR documents listed below, as the MSR-1, once published, will be immutable. Communities that disagree with the choices that the Integration Panel has made in the MSR-1 as presented here are advised to raise any issues during the public comment period, and to provide a rationale for adding or removing specific code points. After the public comment period, the MSR-1 will be frozen for the purposes of developing LGR-1. Updates to the MSR-1 are anticipated only for future versions of the LGR , as described in the next section.

Future Development

The work that will be developed for integration in the first version of the LGR (LGR-1) will be based on MSR-1. If it becomes necessary to stage the release of the LGR , for example because not all Generation Panels are able to submit proposals at the same time, subsequent versions of the LGR may be released.

MSR-1 defers some of the eligible scripts, so as to balance timeliness with comprehensiveness. At some future point in time, another version of the MSR will be developed to include the deferred repertoire. MSR-2 would be the foundation for any LGR versions developed after its release.

All future versions of the MSR and all versions of the LGR must retain full backwards compatibility, such that they preserve the output of any label registration against the old LGR , when applied to an updated LGR or an LGR resulting from a later version of the MSR. Repertoire that has not been used for label registration is not required to be retained in future versions.

It is important to note that, while the expectation is that registrations predating the initial release of an LGR for the respective script will be allowed to remain in place even if they were to conflict, there is no requirement for an initial LGR to be compatible with them or to consider them precedents.

To support IDN variants in the root zone, the ICANN community, at the direction of the Board, undertook several projects to study and make recommendations on their viability, sustainability and delegation. One of these projects is the implementation of the Procedure [PDF, 772 KB] allowing for the development of Label Generation Rules ( LGR ) for the Root Zone. The LGR for the Root Zone is a mechanism for creating and maintaining rules with respect to IDN labels for the root. This mechanism will be used to determine which Unicode code points are permitted for use in U-Labels in the root zone, what variants (if any) are allocatable and what variants (if any) are automatically blocked.

The MSR is the first deliverable from the Integration Panel under the Procedure [PDF, 772 KB] and will serve as a fixed collection of code points from which Generation Panels may make a selection in constructing the repertoire for their respective LGR proposals. In accordance with the Procedure [PDF, 772 KB], “Generation panels must not include in their proposed repertoires any assigned code point that is not included in the maximal set of code points for the root zone defined by the integration panel.”

• Maximal Starting Repertoire – MSR-1-Overview and Rationale.pdf [PDF, 772 KB]
• MSR-1-Annotated-Han-Tables-20140227.pdf [PDF, 43.7 MB]
• MSR-1-Annotated-Hangul-Tables-20140227.pdf [PDF, 4.24 MB]
• MSR-1-Annotated-non-CJK-Tables-20140227.pdf [PDF, 1.86 MB]
• MSR-1-Repertoire+WLE-Rules-20140225.xml [PDF, 123 KB]

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