Re: [idn] A question...

["Mark Davis" <mark@macchiato.com>]

I think another example is relevant to the discussion TC/SC issue. In
Danish, "aa" is equivalent to "å". So one could argue that a perfect
IDN for Danish would map these sequences of letters together. But
because the Latin alphabets are unified, Danish "a", German "a", Dutch
"a", and so on are all represented by the same code points. Trying to
map letters together on the basis of equivalences in different
languages runs afoul of the fact that the equivalences are not the
same across the different languages. (This is even worse with sorting
rather than matching: in German or English, ö < z, but in Swedish z <
ö. Luckily IDN does not have to sort, however.) What the IDN should do
is account for the non-linguistic, character-based equivalences;
linguistic equivalences should be left to higher level protocols or
registrars.

Mark
—————

Πόλλ’ ἠπίστατο ἔργα, κακῶς δ’ ἠπίστατο πάντα — Ὁμήρου Μαργίτῃ
[For transliteration, see http://oss.software.ibm.com/cgi-bin/icu/tr]

http://www.macchiato.com

----- Original Message -----
From: <DougEwell2@cs.com>
To: <idn@ops.ietf.org>
Cc: <rosenne@qsm.co.il>; <jseng@pobox.org.sg>; <jw-lin@yahoo.com.tw>
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 22:07
Subject: Re: [idn] A question...


> In a message dated 2002-02-08 12:15:08 Pacific Standard Time,
> rosenne@qsm.co.il writes:
>
> >>> VERBATIM means "word for word". LITERATIM is "letter by letter".
This
> >>> is precisely the essence of the problem - you hear a domain
name, and
> >>> spell it exactly as you hear it, and it should be found.
> >>
> >> www.color.com and www.colour.com are not ever going to match.
> >
> > So we don't mean VERBATIM.
>
> Right, OK, I made a mistake.  So let's try again and see if I can
avoid
> obscuring the point this time:
>
> "The same, exact thing will happen with Han logographs.  If # and &
are TC
> and SC characters (respectively) that have the same meaning, and the
user
> types # when he should have typed & (or vice versa), under the
proposed IDN
> system the name will not match.  The user will get a 404, mutter
"aw,
> shucks," and type it again, LITERATIM, and the page will appear.
And the
> user will learn that it is important to type the EXACT characters
that appear
> on the business card, or billboard, or wherever the name came from."
>
> -Doug Ewell
>  Fullerton, California
>  (address will soon change to dewell at adelphia dot net)
>
>