Subject: Re: [idn] draft about Tradition and Simplified Chinese Conversion[version01]

From: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 08:00:58 -0500

This pattern of exchange has been going on since an earlier "contributor"
made claims about some (undocumented) "supreme system".

Someone points out (correctly) that labels are seqences of octets, and
octets can have some adjacency semantics (serialized-octet-sequence for
CCS other than ASCII, infix rule for "-" for ASCII), and that except for
this adjacency semantic, a property interior to octets forming isolated
characters, and with the sole exception of "-", independent of character
adjacencies.

This observation has as a conclusion that the correct characterization
of the growth properties of equivalent labels is non-linear.

Someone else (inevitably) makes the claim that because existing labels
in some label collections, and strings in non-label-contexts have some
character adjacency properties, e.g., the LDH distribution in ASCII labels
isn't random, and SC-TC mixes aren't random, and that these statistical
properties suggest linguistic semantics additionally apply.

This observation has as a conclusion that the correct characterization
of the growth properties of equivalent labels is linear.

Now, if the someone else were any old "contributor" with a "supreme"
solution, I wouldn't care. The reply to the authors of TSCONV however
is written by the co-chair of this working group.

I'd like to hear from the other co-chair if, in his opinion, James is
writing as a contributor, in which case he can be ignored as just another
argumentative idiot, at least on this issue, or if he is debating the
authors of a draft, substituting his (odd) technical judgement for that
of the working group as a whole.

James' opinion of himself, or his opinion of myself, isn't that hard to
guess, so lets just look at what syntactic guidance we've got, resulting
label semantics, and scale.

> > For 2, TSCONV intend to reduce 2^n , every one do not have to register
> > 2^n
> 
> TC-SC is not a 2^n problem. TC-SC have basically around 2-4 variant in
> practice. Others nonsense variant can be constructed but it bears no
> meanings usually.

Incidently, the earlier "contributor" of some (undocumented) "supreme system"
actually "got it", and dropped that part of his proposal that had equivalent
scaling properties to that we are discussing when we are in fact discussing
the necessity and sufficiency of intermediate transformations -- mappings
and the tables or algorithms required. 

Eric

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From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 08:57:23 -0800

>is written by the co-chair of this working group.

A better characterization of that would be "the reply so far...". 
Some of us are studying the document carefully and formulating our 
own responses. James has the advantage of having worked directly with 
the authors of the document during its development, so he understood 
the issues earlier than the rest of us.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

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From: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 12:28:14 -0500

Paul,

Seng wrote that particular bit of repetitious drivel.

Now is he "chair" or "average plotz" when opining on the non-existance of
edge-cases?

As for anyone's hypothetical direct work with the authors, and consequent
understanding of the issues, earlier than some "us" (quaint haigiography),
I'm unconvinced of his credentials -- all of them, at least as substitutes
for his comments.

Eric

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From: "ben" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 12:58:47 -0500

Hi Eric,

From: "Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine" <[email-masked]>
> and the tables or algorithms required.

The "Supreme system" is intended to benefit the users of Chinese
Domain Names because TC<->SC is of paramount importance to the Chinese
culture.  The "contributor" never had the intention of making the
"Supreme system" a standard... but had simply tried to offer another
perspective on this TC<->SC problem in the hopes of offering a
solution to this sticky problem.  It has obviously failed in that
respect.

That "old contibutor" is currently too busy (setting up the "Supreme
system") to care whether you care or not.  However that "old
contributor" would like to thank you and the author of the TSCONV for
pointing out the 2^n problem and thereby making the proper
adjustments/modifications to the supreme system.

Thanks,
Ben

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From: "James Seng/Personal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 03:30:10 +0800

Just a simple note:

I am writing this "as a contributor, in which case he can be ignored as
just another argumentative idiot". If I write as co-chair, I will state
so.

ps: You never amaze me with your subtle insult. But I shall pass on your
flamebait. I am not interest to argue with you on irrelevant personality
issues which have no technical barings on the work for IDN.

-James Seng