Re: [idn] UTF-8 / RACE

["James Seng/Personal" <James@Seng.cc>]

Hi Sherin,

> It is good to hear that the overall WG is keeping in mind that most of
the
> world does not understand English well enough to type in that
language.  For
> Arabs, we write from right to left, and we have no notion of upper
case and
> lower case, plus it is a phonetic language.  This is why a RACE
solution in
> the short-term would be not so good for us in the Middle East.

While I can understand the first place, I am not able to follow the
logic which leads you this conclusion. What has bidi or phonetic has to
do with RACE encoding?

> If the
> members of this WG are seeing the fact of applications being deficient
in
> their ability to display RACE-encoded IDN's as a problem, for us in
the
> Middle East it is a very big problem.  Arabic and English are very
> different, and our population does not have a strong command of
English.  As
> we wait for applications to display RACE properly, it will set us back
for a
> long while - that is the crux of the problem I am afraid of.

I think there is some misunderstanding here. RACE is NOT English. RACE
is an transformation encoding scheme of Unicode which resultant string
is LDH.

> Note that the assumption of most of the Arabic Internet using CP1256
or
> Sakhr is not entirely accurate.  It is more accurate to state in what
> context is what encoding more popular.  For Web content, you will find
more
> sites written using CP1256 but there are some significant
implementations
> using UTF-8.  I am happy to see that Mr. Adonis Fakih is already on
this
> list since he represents Ayna.com.  Ayna is the number one Arabic
portal -
> and it supports UTF-8.

Interesting. Do you have any statistic on the usage of UTF-8 vs CP1256
in website in Arabic? Or you have pointers to more info on this?

> In the context of Arabic URL's however, there is no de facto standard,
> though Microsoft has certainly given us a strong pathway to one via
UTF-8.
> Native Name appears to be exploiting that, and it seems to be the
> front-runner at this stage.  I believe it would be easy for the other
> players to do the same thing, including i-DNS and Walid.

I think commerical implementation is irrelevant for the WG standard
consideration. We have to do what we have to do to ensure the bring
about the right standard, not one which the commerical company wants.

> I hope this explains my worries James.  In a nutshell, we already have
a
> starting point in the Middle East for giving users of the Web portion
of the
> Internet access to Arabic domain names using UTF-8.  It works
> "out-of-the-box."  Given that most of the new users of the Internet in
the
> Middle East equate the Internet with the Web, I would hate to see that
> momentum die.  Keep in mind that Internet Explorer has over 90% of the
> market in the Middle East due to Netscape 4's inability to display
Arabic
> fonts.  Netscape 6 solves this, but it may be well too late.

I am kind of worried on the statement "out-of-the-box".

You see, given my experience in this field, it is *very* easy to
demostrate a system which works "out-of-the-box" under the right
combination, e.g. Arabic IE in Arabic-enabled Windows using Arabic
domain names.

Have you try Chinese URL on Arabic IE on Thai Windows? I did and I wont
classify the result as "out-of-the-box".

No, I certainly do not buy into the argument of "just-send-utf8" as your
email describe here. Pardon me if I misunderstood it.

-James Seng