Re: [idn] case preservation<20011009004803.28618.qmail@cr.yp.to><00b501c15078$afb77ce0$ec1bd9d2@temp><20011009043734.15576.qmail@cr.yp.to><58648759.1002614060@localhost>

[Martin Duerst <duerst@w3.org>]

At 12:08 01/10/09 -0400, ben wrote:
>At first, the '1','l' may not seem like a good analogy for TC<->SC
>conversion because we definitely do *not* want to map 'l' with '1'.
>However, the confusion of '1' and 'l' does illustrate why TC<->SC is
>so important.  For example, when a person is given 'l.TLD', he can
>easy type in '1.TLD' instead and have absolutely no idea why he cannot
>reach the intended website.  In English the chance of such a confusion
>is only limited to a few cases (such as '0' and '1') where as for
>Chinese, *every single* Chinese character poises the opportunity for
>such confusion.  Remember, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese
>are indistinguishable to many users of CDNs of certain
>backgroud/education/location/culture.  (Given certain Chinese
>characters, even someone as educated in Chinese as I, cannot tell you
>whether it is traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese.)

This is a good point. But please note that you don't actually have
to know whether a character is simplified or traditional. If you
work on a simplified Chinese system or with a simplified Chinese
input method, you will just get simplified Chinese characters
as the first choice from you input method. Same thing the other
way round for traditional Chinese.

This means that if somebody wants to have a domain name usable
both is China,Singapore,.. and in Taiwan,Hong Kong,..., they
have to do two registrations. Of course, there are cases where
there are more registrations needed (e.g. for simplified
characters used in Taiwan), but these are exceptions.

Also, for most characters where there is actually a difference
(there are many cases where there is none, and which are
therefore unified), it is quite easy to tell whether they
are simplified or not. The main reason for this is that
most simplifications are very systematic. Of course, because
there are so many Chinese characters, there are always some
that you don't know. That is something that applies to any
other aspect of Chinese characters.


Regards,    Martin.