GNU Libidn API Reference Manual
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GNU Libidn API Reference Manual

Table of Contents
punycode -- Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for IDNA.
stringprep_generic -- Low-level generic stringprep profile for debugging purposes.
stringprep_kerberos5 -- Stringprep Profile for Kerberos UTF-8 Strings
stringprep_nameprep -- A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names
stringprep -- Preparation of Internationalized Strings.
idna -- Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications.

GNU Libidn is an implementation of the Stringprep (with the Nameprep and Kerberos 5 profiles), Punycode and IDNA specifications defined by the IETF Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) working group, used for internationalized domain names. It is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

The library contains a generic Stringprep implementation (including Unicode 3.2 NFKC normalization, table mapping of characters, and Bidirectional Character handling), two Stringprep profiles; Nameprep (for IDN) and Kerberos5, as well as a Punycode and IDNA.

The Stringprep API consists of two main functions, one for converting data from the system's native representation into UTF-8, and one function to perform the Stringprep processing. Each stringprep profile has a corresponding CPP macro. Adding a new Stringprep profile for your application within the API is straightforward. The Punycode API consists of one encoding function and one decoding function. The IDNA API consists of the ToASCII and ToUnicode functions.

The library is currently used by forthcoming SASL and Kerberos libraries to process user names and passwords before they are input to cryptographic operations. It is also used by experimental code for domain name related purposes.

GNU Libidn is developed for the GNU/Linux system, but runs on over 20 Unix platforms (including Solaris, IRIX, AIX, and Tru64) and Windows.