Subject: Re: Balkanize - IDN ii

From: [email-masked] (Dan Kolis)
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 17:11:08 -0500

Dan Kolis [email-masked] said:
One reason the IDN thing is so daunting is the work arounds are not that
bad. For instance, you can embed a backgroundless GIF into a web page and
have any ideogram link to a URL. That's nearly ideal in many ways.

Keith Moore [email-masked] said:
>only if you assume that people "nearly" always get domain names 
>(or things that contain domain names, like email addresses and URLs)
>from web pages.  in practice the contexts in which domain names appear
>and are transcribed are far more diverse than that. 
>what you are saying, in effect, is that people who don't speak English
>don't need to be able to transcribe domain names from other contexts.

Dan K says:
Magazines have absolutely no interest in making it possible to enter URL
sucessfully you find in a printed publication. They insert hypens, kern,
change underlining, all sorts of sins in printing URLs. They have had enough
years handling these objects to not mangle them. Your not speaking any
language when you select characters and entering them anyway. Your just
finding the right buttons to press. I've suggested a regime that has some
tricky_to_build slop in it, so you get the same results with or without much
attention to detail. This is only in the context of DNS entries. People
surely have a right to make stuff look as elaborate as they like, the
question is, if they don't to that, do they get punished for what they don't
know how to do.

General question:
Jon Postel got amazing results... Many of the old(er) timers in this
business must have talked to him at length about the DNS. What was his take
on this sort of thing?

Regards,
Dan Kolis

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2000 18:28:07 -0500

> sucessfully you find in a printed publication.

they do a much better job when the URL appears in paid advertisement copy.

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From: "James Seng/Personal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 09:36:33 +0800

I have refrained myself from participating in this discussion so far but it
got to a point where i feel there is a need for clarification.

a) Discussion here assumed that balkanize of the Internet = IDN.

   Why so? Probably because IDN is bring something most people here
   not able to understand. I have no intention to argue to those who based
   upon "if I dont understand it, you are balkanizing" since it is probably
   pointless self-centric argument.

   However, what is important to clarify is that IDN WG is not trying to
   balkanize the Internet. In fact, we are trying to do the reverse, ie,
   prevent the balkanization by defining an interoperable standard for IDN.
   Put it this way: There are probably worst method to define IDN such as
   letting the Industry determine it...

b) I can see Ohta-san back on the topic of IDN and LDN (I18N vs L10N).
   Once again, I can go on a long argument with the choice of names,
   OR; I can go on and do something more productive. I choose the latter
   since in some sense, there is no differences in that we are trying
   to introduced non-ASCII characters into domain names. Call it what you
   like.

c) The IDN WG is making huge progress in the little time we have and
   the pressure. There are two design team working on the protocol and
   something called "nameprep" in IDN termiology.

   I have no presumation on when we can finish our work but I hope soon.

   For those interested, http://www.i-d-n.net/ is the official WG site.

d) IDN is one of the latest I18N thing to hit IETF. It is not the first
   and I am sure it is not the last. It is important for IETF as a whole
   to think how to deal with I18N in general.

   There is no point taking all these attempts as threat of balkanization.
   Rejecting them in IETF would only results these to be done elsewhere.

   I have no opinion whether doing in IETF or outside IETF is 'better'
   but that it is a choice we all in IETF have to made. There is no right
   or wrong but whether you like it or not, it is coming.

-James Seng