[idn] (bias) summary of reordering discussion

["James Seng/Personal" <jseng@pobox.org.sg>]

On the questions posted:

1. Efficient - I accepted that reordering produce a shorter ACE string,
sometimes as much as 20%. This means instead of a "zq--zxcvbnmasdfg"
label, I get a "zq--zxcvbnmasd". I do not buy the arguments it is
helpful to naked eye, to memorised or save RAM however.

2. Compression efficient in future since statistic - Lee's counter that
compression "always SHORTER labels than usual". Mathematically, it can
be proven this is wrong (very basic pigeon hole principle).

3. Referencing from established I18N organisation - ISO14651 is deem
inappropriate and I agree with it. No alternative was proposed.

4. Stability of reordering - Lee's countered with the arguments that
reordering tables would never changed. I am not sure if that is possible
but I agree with the assessment that it is possible to design reordering
to be stable. However, I like to see explictive statement in future
draft.

5. Future additional of code points / changes to reordering - Lee's
proposal is a two prefix solution, using prefix as a versioning tag. I
do not like to solve a problem by creating others, especially one which
makes it even more complex. Lee have yet to address the process of how
future additional of code points or changes to reordering could be done.
(IDN WG is not going to exist forever...I dream of finishing our work
one day).

6. Reordering is never ending task - Lee's countered that so is
Nameprep. My thoughts is two wrong dont make one right. (OTOH, Nameprep
which is based on UTC work have explicit principles on how it can be
done. And Nameprep is not subjective to frequency analysis changes which
reordering is)

Of the people participate in the reordering discussion

Martin Duerst - explicit objection
Mark Davis - not very supportive, not explicit
Adam Costello - (no conclusion from comments)
Doug Ewell - explicit objection
Paul Hoffman - explicit objection
Eric Brunner-William - somewhat supportive, not explicit
Kenny Huang - (no conclusion from comments)
James Seng - explicit objection
Karlsson Kent - explicit objection
Erik Nordmark - not very supportive
David Hopwood - (no conclusion from comments)

This is my rough read of the discussion on reordering so far (please
correct me, and apologise in advance, if I am wrong).

(Wearing my co-chair's hat) It is not a vote or even a strawpoll here
obviously but I am trying to get a feel of the group consensus. But if
these discussion is any indication of the group consensus, it does not
indicate very little support for reordering. If there is other comments,
please bring them forward soon. Thanks.

-James Seng