Re: [idn] nameprep2 and the slash homograph issue

[Erik van der Poel <erik@vanderpoel.org>]

Gervase Markham wrote:
> Erik van der Poel wrote:
> > 
> > Also, do you know what happens if the domain name is very long? 
>
> It just gets very long, currently.

I hope you will think about what to do when the name is really long, 
keeping in mind that the most important part of the name is the end (the 
right side).

> Well, the current domain indicator will show the domain, slash 
> homographs and all. We're still developing our response, but it's likely 
> that we'll have to blacklist this character. Opera's new beta already 
> has a small set of characters it doesn't allow.
>
> Ideally, we wouldn't be acting unilaterally on this one, and would be 
> doing the restrictions based on consensus. But before we can go there, 
> we need to figure out what we think is needed first. That process is 
> still going on.

It's really great to hear this! I fully agree with you that consensus 
would be ideal. I'm taking the liberty of Cc'ing one of the Opera 
developers, in the hope that they might be willing to discuss their 
particular choices for the character blacklist. If various people can 
start to agree on a blacklist, this info can be fed into any RFC 
revision process (which I hope will begin).

> The issue, of course, is that the font designation we use has to produce 
> a good font on all platforms.

Yes, a good font on *all* platforms, and also for *all* parts of the 
world. I am quite aware of those issues. See the bottom of:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/fonts.html

One of the great things about open source is that lots of people from 
all over the world come to help you, with localizations, default font 
choices, etc.

Erik