Subject: IDN readings et al

From: [email-masked] (Dan Kolis)
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 13:37:31 -0500

Hi,
I've read 60 printed pages of the retroactive corresp. about
internationalizing the DNS off the ietf ftp site. Pretty interesting.

My passed around napkin tests to non-technocrats at lunch today was
surprising. No one got even close to an effective proceedure to find a DNS
for the Icelandic ice cream company if it used diacritical marks which are
unfamiliar. I was particularly surprised no one suggested that its NOT an
effective proceedure to guess at URL's... why not use a search engine? You
don't guess at phone numbers.... I phrased the question with great care to
include enough information that that was I thought an equally weighted option.

It occurred to me URL's for websites, (especially 'home' pages) really have
taken on a life of their own perhaps quite different then there original intent.

I'm surprised some university or some other institution doesn't have a
usability lab with some controlled environment to see how regular people use
technology. Mostly, they struggle horribly. I don't, but then again I have
probably devoted too much time to understanding 'things';  people with a
life have apportioned there attention span with less nuts and bolts in it.

Since links [anchors] in web pages will probably work with click no matter
what, most of the suffering revolves around representing initial URL's in
printed human readable form, and getting it to work once. After that, its
click click (save) click jump, whatever.

But, not all printed information is human readable. Barcodes for URL's now
have a trail of patent seekers; (my PTO disclosure actually is 20 days in
front of the huge batch of probably worthless patents after it).

You don't deal with an infinite history of expectations when all you expect
the user to do is point at a blotch on a paper and pull a trigger!

Regards,
Dan Kölis {just kidding. Though actually my surname was/is a Polish river.
I'm curious now to find if it should have a diacritical mark)

Dan Kolis