Re: Character equivalence mapping (was: Re: [idn] SLCminutes)

[John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>]

Ken, 

We are in agreement that "equivalence matching" based on
character shapes is fairly hopeless.   But...

--On Wednesday, 02 January, 2002 17:51 -0800 Kenneth Whistler
<kenw@sybase.com> wrote:

>...
> The problem of "AB.example" is generally dealt with by
> context. First of all "example" would be in Greek if I was
> really dealing with Greek. Second, if I wanted people to enter
> "ab.whatever" I'd be advertising in *English* to set the
> expectations. If I wanted people to enter
> "<alpha><beta>.....", I'd be advertising in *Greek* to set the
> expectations, and people would be using Greek keyboards and
> expect to enter Greek.

The problem is that, with an international Internet and (short)
DNS names, the context may not be there, or may be unreliable
enough that users, in practice, will need an opportunity to pick
among alternatives.  While I think Edmon's notions would make
that problem worse, rather than better (hence my attempt at a
reductio ad absurdum argument in my earlier note), I don't
believe that "resolve by context" is going to be realistic in
practice --again, in the DNS context-- either.

    john