
				idnkit
	     -- internationalized domain name toolkit --
			     version 1.0
	       Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC)


Table of contents of this file:

  1. Overview
  2. Directory structure of this distribution
  3. Supported systems
  4. Contact information

See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions.
See the file NEWS for a list of major changes in the current release.


1. Overview

idnkit, which was originally known as mDNkit, is a toolkit for handling
internationalized domain names.  To handle such names, the following
features are required:

    + Encoding conversion
	Multilingualized domain names have to be converted from
	the encoding application uses (local encoding) to
	the encoding used for name resolution (IDN encoding), and
	vice versa.  Since domain names in IDN encoding just look
	like good old ASCII domain names, the encoding is also known
	as ASCII-compatible encoding (ACE).

    + NAMEPREP
	Name preparation of domain names before converting to
	IDN encoding.  Basically this is a normalization process
	of the domain names.

These conversion/nameprep processes to domain names have to be
performed before they are sent to DNS servers.  And since the
processed domain names (in IDN encoding) consist of only legal ASCII
characters, no changes are required to DNS servers.
	
idnkit provides several ways for adding these features.

This kit consists of following components.

    + library for handling internationalized domain names
      (libidnkit, libidnkitlite)
	Those libraries implement encoding conversion and nameprep.
	They provide easy-to-use APIs for handling internationalized
	domain name in your applications.

	Both libraries provide almost the same API.  The difference
	between them is that libidnkit internally uses iconv() function
	to provide encoding conversion from UTF-8 to the local encoding
	(such as iso-8859-1, usually determined by the current locale),
	and vise versa.  The idnconv and runidn commands in this toolkit
	use libidnkit.

	libidnkitlite is lightweight version of libidnkit.  It assumes
	local encoding is UTF-8 so that it never uses iconv().

    + codeset conversion utility (idnconv)
	This command can convert internationalized domain name written
	in local encoding (e.g. EUC-JP) to ACE or the opposite direction.
	It can also convert named.conf and zone master files for BIND.

    + command which adds IDN feature dynamically to unix applications 
      (runidn)
	This command enables normal applications to handle
	internationalized domain names by dynamically attaching special
	library to them.  See ``2. using runidn'' below.

	Note that this command is not installed unless you specify the
	`--enable-runidn' option to `configure'.  See the file `INSTALL'
	for more information about installation.

    + patch for BIND9 that adds IDN capability
	This patch adds IDN capability to BIND9.  It adds encoding
	conversion and nameprep features to `dig', `host' and
	`nslookup'.  With the patch, those commands become capable of
	internationalized domain names.

    + IDN wrapper for Windows applications
        On windows, name resolving request is passed to WINSOCK DLL. So,
        replacing WINSOCK DLL with multi-lingual domain name version 
        makes legacy windows applications compatible with IDN.  This is
	wrapper DLL for WINSOCK's name resolving functions. See
	``3. using IDN wrapper'' below.


2. Directory structure of this distribution

Below is a directory structure of this distribution with some 
important files and their brief description.

    +README             this file
    +README.ja          .. in Japanese
    +INSTALL            compilation and installation instructions.
    +INSTALL.ja         .. in Japanese
    +DISTFILES          list of files in this distribution
    +NEWS               what's new in this version
    +ChangeLog          list of changes
    +Makefile.in        toplevel makefile template
    +configure          a `configure' script
    +include/
    |   +config.h.in    template header file for configuration
    |   +idn/           header files for libidnkit and libindkitlite
    |   +mdn/           header files for backward compatibility
    +lib/               source for libidnkit and libidnkitlite
    +patch/
    |   +bind9/         BIND9 patch
    +tools/
    |   +idnconv/       source for idnconv command
    |   +runidn/        source for runidn command
    +util/              utilities
    +wsock/             source for IDN wrapper


3. Supported systems

We've had successful builds on the following systems:

    -------------------------------------------------------------------
    OS                      iconv library      configure options
    ===================================================================
    FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE     GNU libiconv       --with-libiconv
    for Intel               1.8
    -------------------------------------------------------------------
    Red Hat Linux 7.3       standard library   none
    for Intel               (glibc)
    -------------------------------------------------------------------
    Solaris 9               standard library   none
    for Sparc               (libc)
    -------------------------------------------------------------------

The latest information about supported/unsupported systems will be
found at the mdnkit FAQ page linked from:

	http://www.nic.ad.jp/en/idn/


4. Contact information

Please see

	http://www.nic.ad.jp/en/idn/

for the latest news about this kit.
Bug reports and comments on this kit should be sent to

	mdnkit-bugs@nic.ad.jp
and
	idn-cmt@nic.ad.jp

respectively.


; $Id: README,v 1.1 2003/06/04 00:24:58 marka Exp $
