Re: [idn] normalisation, etc.

[RJ Atkinson <rja@inet.org>]

At 22:31 22/06/00 , James Seng wrote:
>Having it on the client *is* scary. Consistency to maintain is unimaginable.
>But that may be the the only technical feasible way to do it on deployment.
>Whatever the case, it is best not to make any assumption.

         I'm not sure its any more scary than at present.  Putting 
normalisation in the client means putting into the DNS Resolver 
on the client, not putting it into Netscape or IE after all.

>While it is kind of out of topic, the question to ask is if the website
>is *already* in Arabic or Chinese, why do they still need an English URL?

         There is no technical need for an ASCII URL.  

         There might be business advantages to having a URL 
that can be expressed in ASCII because the majority
of the current user base has a technical means to enter ASCII
characters (in the form of a keyboard).

>Or the person can *only* read/write Chinese, why should he learn English?

         No particularly good reason in this context.  The goal
is that a user of any particular language can have domain names
(including host names) expressed in the native form for that 
particular language.

         The answer that I have frequently heard from Chinese folks 
in China is that it is more profitable to be able to also speak English 
than not (for business/economic reasons).

Ran
rja@inet.org