Re: [idn] Thoughts on nameprep

[bill@mail.nic.nu (J. William Semich)]

Don't a large number of computer users in Japan (the majority?) use Mac
computers, which support direct input of the local character set from the
keyboard, without IME?

Tech staff here use an iMac running the Japanese version of Mac OS for
Japanese (multilingual) domain name testing purposes just for that reason. 

Bill Semich

At 10:43 PM 3/15/01 +0900, Bruce Thomson wrote:
>I can help out with the Japanese keyboard explanation. When typing
>in Japanese you have a choice of several keyboard input packages
>available, of which IME is the most popular. Without IME or equivalent,
>you would be limited what is on the keyboard itself, which is basically
>your standard ASCII. With IME, you are able to type a whole range of
>hiragana, katakana, Kanji, and special symbols, all by typing alphabetics
>and then converting.
>
>The default input mode is hiragana, which lets you type sequences of
>hiragana
>by typing the equivalent alphabetics. For example, type r and a to get the
>single hiragana character pronounced ra. You can then either confirm the
>hiragana character, add additional hiragana to the sequence, or press
>the space bar to convert it into something else. It converts it into what
>it guesses is my most likely choice, and I can press the space bar again
>to get the next choice. Pressing space a third time gives me a menu with
>all possible choices.  With "ra", I get 13 menu choices: the original
>full-width hiragana, 4 Kanji, full-width katakana, half-width katakana,
>and the alphabetic sequences RA, Ra, and ra, in both full-width and
>half-width alphabetics. Whichever choice I make, IME remembers it as my
>preferred choice, bringing it to the top of the list of choices next
>time I convert the same characters.
>
>IME can be quite annoying in its attempts to be intelligent, remembering
>previous choices which were exceptions, or typed by someone else borrowing
>my computer, etc. So it's certainly possible for it to encourage mistakes
>by leading you to input something you didn't intend.
>
>At this point user names and passwords are probably without exception
>limited to ASCII, but depending on what software you use to enter them
>it might be possible to accidentally type Kanji, kana, or full-width
>alphanumerics. So people learn to be careful.
>
>As to why people still might use double-width numbers (or alphabetics,
>for that matter), some people seem to feel that they look better
>when intermixed with Kanji text (which is full width). Personally
>I don't use them, but some people do. The only reasonable use I have
>seen for half-width kana recently is on cell phones, because of the
>limited screen size. These non-standard characters are not used
>for non-text input such as user names, passwords, credit card
>numbers, telephone numbers, zip codes, etc.
>
>If someone gave me the opportunity to work on the Japanese keyboard spec,
>I would like to consider trying to wean people off these old characters
>by refusing to convert to them (this could be a checkbox option). You
>can always type them if you desperately need them by switching keyboard
>modes. Currently in addition to the default mode I described above, there
>are modes for typing katakana, ASCII, full-width alphanumerics, and
>half-width kana directly without the conversion step. I expect that
>creators of proportional fonts would then work to make mixtures of
>alphabetics and Kanji blend more smoothly.
>
>Bruce
>
>"D. J. Bernstein" wrote:
>> 
>> Yoshiro YONEYA writes:
>> > 'intelligent IME'
>> eel
>> Could you please explain this in more detail? How does the typical
>> Japanese keyboard interface work?
>> 
>> What exactly do you type if you want to connect by FTP to ftp.aol.com
>> and log in as anonymous with password yone@nic.ad.jp? What would you
>> expect to type if aol and the username and the password were replaced by
>> Japanese names?
>> 
>> Suppose we settle on fast nameprep: it's the keyboard interface's job to
>> help you type good domain names, so that other programs don't have to
>> worry about bad domain names. What changes would you make in the
>> keyboard interface to support this?
>> 
>> > Half-width kana will be obsolete
>> 
>> So, if we take the slow nameprep approach, then in twenty years we'll
>> have a bunch of networking programs with the useless skill of converting
>> half-width kana to full-width kana. Right?
>> 
>> As for numbers, Bruce seemed to say that most applications expect ASCII
>> digits, and that double-width numbers won't work. If that's correct, why
>> is anybody using double-width numbers?
>> 
>> ---Dan
>
>