Subject: Re: [idn] Re: FYI: BOF on Internationalized Email Addresses (IEA)

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 09:50:23 +0100

On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 05:39:32PM -0800,
 Mark Davis <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 76 lines which said:

> We should remember that for a great many people in the world, Latin letters are
> quite unnatural; it'd be a bit like if we had to use Greek letters in all email
> addresses. 

It would be a bit like if we had to use Greek letters in mathematics
:-)

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 16:16:20 -0800

I'm curious: why do you think that everyone would be satisfied with Latin
characters only, and no non-Latin characters?

Mark
__________________________________
http://www.macchiato.com
► शिष्यादिच्छेत्पराजयम् ◄

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Crispin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Keith Moore" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>
Sent: Mon, 2003 Oct 27 11:10
Subject: [idn] Re: FYI: BOF on Internationalized Email Addresses (IEA)

> On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Keith Moore wrote:
>
>  >> Thanks for taking a stab at a problem statement.  I'd like to drill down
>  >> on this just a bit.
>  >> What is the source of the "growing need"?  Is it:
>  >> [snip]
>
>
> I agree that this needs to be stated, but someone other than me will have
> to do it.
>
> I believe that the primary push for this functionality comes from regions
> which use Latin alphabetics with diacriticals; and that most individuals
> in regions which do not use Latin script are accept the use of Latin
> script for multinational interchange.  In many regions where Latin
> diacriticals are used, there is no acceptable transform of a surname to a
> form that does not use diacriticals.  Simply omitting the diacritical
> causes (at least to the inhabitants of those regions) a misspelling.
>
> This set of beliefs naturally biases how I approach the problem.  The
> problem statement must be free of bias, including mine.
>
> -- Mark --
>
> http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
> Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
> Si vis pacem, para bellum.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 17:39:32 -0800

Ok, I understand more about the context.

Based on what I've seen, I think it quite likely that people will want email
addresses in their native script, even if that means that outsiders can't
(easily) use those email address. After all, it is quite easy to have multiple
email addresses. Mr. Tanaka can have one with Latin letters and one with
Japanese (e.g. [email-masked]).

We should remember that for a great many people in the world, Latin letters are
quite unnatural; it'd be a bit like if we had to use Greek letters in all email
addresses. And there are many projects underway in less-developed countries to
bring computers to masses of people that will even less familiarity with Latin
letters.

Mark

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Crispin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Keith Moore" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>; "IMAP Extensions WG" <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>
Sent: Mon, 2003 Oct 27 17:15
Subject: Re: [idn] Re: FYI: BOF on Internationalized Email Addresses (IEA)

> On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Mark Davis wrote:
> I didn't say that.  I stated my belief that, for reasons of practicality,
> most individuals in regions which do not use Latin script accept the use
> of Latin script for multinational exchange.
>
> It does not work well for an individual in Japan with surname Tanaka to
> expect the overwhelming majority of non-Japanese individuals worldwide to
> know his surname is written with the Han characters for "rice paddy" and
> "middle", or what those characters look like, or how to enter those
> characters on the computer.
>
> It does, however, work for him to expect that the overwhelming majority of
> individuals worldwide to know how to deal with the 6 Latin letters that
> form the romanization "Tanaka".
>
> Nor is it very likely that this situation will change in the future.  I
> doubt that many individuals in the world are literate in all the world's
> active scripts.  Literacy in one's native script and basic Latin script is
> something that most computer users possess today.
>
> For domestic exchange only, that pair of Han characters are probably
> alright.  Within Western Europe, it's probably alright to use Latin
> characters with diacriticals.
>
> Perhaps the main problem that needs to be decided in any IEA effort is if
> it is alright to have email addresses that are only usable in limited
> areas of the world; or if not, how to represent internationalized email
> addresses in a usable fashion when (not if) the email address needs to be
> represented for a person and/or computer is illiterate in that script.
>
> A likely side issue is whether it is "good enough" to promote Latin
> characters with diacriticals to the same status of "everybody must know
> how to do these" that is required for ASCII.
>
> -- Mark --
>

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 17:15:00 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

-- Mark --

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 19:37:37 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Mark Davis wrote:
> (easily) use those email address.

That may well be the case.

> We should remember that for a great many people in the world, Latin
> letters are quite unnatural; it'd be a bit like if we had to use Greek
> letters in all email addresses. And there are many projects underway in
> less-developed countries to bring computers to masses of people that
> will even less familiarity with Latin letters.

I am not convinced that it is possible to use a computer on the Internet
anywhere in the world without at least a basic acquaintance with Latin
script.

I do not believe many individuals (other than primary school children) are
literate in their native language but are completely illiterate in Latin
script.  This does not mean "being able to read or write the English
language"; rather, this simply means knowing the Latin script alphabet.

Put another way, individuals who are completely illiterate in Latin script
are also likely to be illiterate in their native language script as well.

No other script on the planet has such international recognition.

There is undoubtably a *preference* for one's native script; and that
preference should be respected as much as possible.

-- Mark --

---

From: Abhijit Menon-Sen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 09:52:43 +0530

> language"; rather, this simply means knowing the Latin script alphabet.

Mark,

The number of people in India who can read and write only their native
language, but have no usable knowledge of Latin script, is much larger
than the tiny number who are familiar with both. I'm told that this is
true for many native speakers of Chinese and Arabic as well.

The use of local scripts is much more than just a "preference" for the
numerous localisation efforts in India which focus on making computing
more accessible to poor farmers and people in villages.

(I agree that it's currently nearly impossible to use computers if one
isn't familiar with the Latin script, of course.)

-- ams

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 11:15:17 +0100

Mark Crispin writes:
> On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote:
>> (I agree that it's currently nearly impossible to use computers if 
>> one isn't familiar with the Latin script, of course.)
>
> Which probably makes the rest of this discussion academic, unless 
> we're going to undertake solving *that* problem for Microsoft and the 
> various UNIX/Linux vendors...

You're not appreciating the full complexity of the problem. ;)

Not only should the email standards permit MUAs and MTAs of the year 
2020 to solve the problem Abhijit mentions, but they should even permit 
such future programs to interoperate with latinate ones of the present 
and near future. And if it's too hard for latinate MUAs to implement 
the IEA standard, that won't happen.

--Arnt

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:42:19 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

> true for many native speakers of Chinese and Arabic as well.

I defer to your superior knowledge about India.

I do not believe that this is true for Chinese.  AFAIK, Chinese primary
school kids use Latin script with hanyu-pinyin as a stopgap prior to their
mastery of Han script (which takes many years).

> more accessible to poor farmers and people in villages.

A poor farmer or villager in China is more likely to be totally illiterate
than to be literate in Han script but unable to recognize Latin script.

Note that when I say "recognize Latin script", I mean the ability to
determine that "dog" is a three-letter word that has the letters "d", "o",
and "g", each of which the individual recognizes and can name.  This does
not include the ability to recognize that this refers to a domesticated
canine.

> isn't familiar with the Latin script, of course.)

Which probably makes the rest of this discussion academic, unless we're
going to undertake solving *that* problem for Microsoft and the various
UNIX/Linux vendors...

-- Mark --

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 11:12:54 -0500

it appears to me that this thread is not very different from the idn
considerations on usage of idn in the world. So what is really new in this
discussion?

Marc.

-- Tuesday, October 28, 2003 07:10:59 -0800 Mark Davis
<[email-masked]> wrote/a ecrit:

> It is currently impossible to use the Internet without knowing the Latin
> script. However, the goal of most well-designed client software and
> operating systems is to permit the user to work entirely within their
> native language, with a fully localized system. This is reaching to India
> and other countries; Microsoft has introduced fully localized versions of
> Indic Windows just recently, and Linux vendors are hard at work to
> produce fully localized versions of their software.
> 
> Email and Web addresses are the big remaining holdouts for most people.
> People should not be forced to use a script that they are unfamiliar
> with, just to use email addresses and sites in their own countries. Even
> if they are familiar with the Latin script, it is very often a very bad
> match for their languages, making it very difficult to figure out how
> native words would be spelled in it.
> 
> Mark
> 

------------------------------------------
Marc Blanchet
Hexago
tel: +1-418-266-5533x225
------------------------------------------
http://www.freenet6.net: IPv6 connectivity
------------------------------------------

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 12:36:07 -0500

--On Tuesday, October 28, 2003 11:12 -0500 Marc Blanchet
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> it appears to me that this thread is not very different from
> the idn considerations on usage of idn in the world. So what
> is really new in this discussion?

See the draft.

Quick answer: DNS interfaces really exist at the protocol level,
and a large part of the hypothesis behind IDNA was that it would
be possible, after we had enough implementations, to prevent an
end-user from ever seeing an encoded domain name.  That story
just doesn't hold for a special encoding-based (aka MUA-only)
email local part implementation, and maybe not for email
generally.  For example, under current rules, an MTA is required
to stuff the name it actually sees in HELO/EHLO and the MAIL
command into various headers.  If it is expected to notice that
they have special encodings and decodes them, we've gone rather
far into "the infrastructure is involved", even if the actual
on-the-wire transport is not impacted.  If it doesn't do that,
the encodings --both the IDNA domain parts and the special mail
encoding-- are going to be in the user's face, in the most
literal sense of that term.  

The similarity of that situation to the early IDN discussions is
the importance of the "what problem are you solving" question.
And it is very clear to me that, for email addresses, the answer
has got to "user sees their own characters in their email
addresses and the email addresses of those whose languages they
speak/ recognize.  Users typically don't actually see envelopes.
But seeing, e.g., different forms/codings of an address in the
header "From:" field than appears in "Return-path:" or than
appears in a signature line in the message body, is going to
create real unhappiness.  Similarly as has been pointed out in
another context, seeing an address in different from when it
appears in a header than when it (and that header) are
encapsulated in a message/?? body part is just not going to
amuse any user to whom we've said "ok, now you have i18n
strings, enjoy your new found local language capabilities".  And
I guess that tells you what I think the problem is that we need
to solve.  YMMD.

     john

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 15:07:19 -0500

> Japanese (e.g. [email-masked]).

This gets interesting in the context of a "reply all".

Apologies for breaking the UTF-8 in the quote, but it's illustrative - if the
breakage had been in the To/Cc lines, things would have broken even worse
unless whatever scheme we end up using is ASCII-transparent.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 12:36:07 -0500

See the draft.

     john

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 15:07:19 -0500

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 18:40:03 -0500

--On Monday, October 27, 2003 11:10 -0800 Mark Crispin
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>  >> Thanks for taking a stab at a problem statement.  I'd like
> to drill down  >> on this just a bit.
> I agree that this needs to be stated, but someone other than
> me will have to do it.
> 
> I believe that the primary push for this functionality comes
> from regions which use Latin alphabetics with diacriticals;
> and that most individuals in regions which do not use Latin
> script are accept the use of Latin script for multinational
> interchange.  In many regions where Latin diacriticals are
> used, there is no acceptable transform of a surname to a form
> that does not use diacriticals.  Simply omitting the
> diacritical causes (at least to the inhabitants of those
> regions) a misspelling.
>...

Actually, unlike the original push for internationalization of
email message bodies, and some of the push for IDNs, most of the
push I'm seeing for this are coming from folks with distinctly
non-Latin (i.e., not Cyrillic or Greek either) scripts... e.g.,
east Asia, middle east, etc.

I can't speak for the motivations of the others who have thought
and written about the problem.

So these are real "different characters" issues, not the
complexities of dealing with diacriticals on Latin letters and
what their omission might mean.

     john

---

From: "Madan Ganesh Velayudham" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 20:13:42 +0530

> I'm curious: why do you think that everyone would be 
> satisfied with Latin characters only, and no non-Latin characters?
> 
> Mark

Yes, I also agree. Especially in India, we have more than 10 Languages ( Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, etc., )

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 06:54:45 -0800

Sigh. I used "Greek" in an analogy because I was hoping that some of the Latin-only folks out there would at least recognize the name of one other script. But how comforable would you really be, if يُُ وِرِ فُرسِد تُ رَِد َن ِنتِرِلي دِففِرِنت سكرِپت، سِمپلي تُ ُندِرستَند ِمَِل َددرِسسِس، َند َ سكرِپت تهَت كُُلد ُنلي پَرتَِللي رِفلِكت تهِ رَِل سپِللِنگ ُف يُُر وُردس?

Mark

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 07:10:59 -0800

> going to undertake solving *that* problem for Microsoft and the various

It is currently impossible to use the Internet without knowing the Latin script.
However, the goal of most well-designed client software and operating systems is
to permit the user to work entirely within their native language, with a fully
localized system. This is reaching to India and other countries; Microsoft has
introduced fully localized versions of Indic Windows just recently, and Linux
vendors are hard at work to produce fully localized versions of their software.

Email and Web addresses are the big remaining holdouts for most people. People
should not be forced to use a script that they are unfamiliar with, just to use
email addresses and sites in their own countries. Even if they are familiar with
the Latin script, it is very often a very bad match for their languages, making
it very difficult to figure out how native words would be spelled in it.

Mark

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 08:22:37 -0800

I wouldn't have thought so either, but at least some people questioned the need
for non-Latin characters, and went so far as to exclude them from a proposed
problem statement:

> ... There is a growing need to use additional
> characters, specifically Latin characters with diacriticals and non-Latin
> characters, in email addresses to better serve the needs of the
> multi-national Internet community...

Mark

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marc Blanchet" <[email-masked]>
To: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>; "Mark Crispin"
<[email-masked]>; "Abhijit Menon-Sen" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tue, 2003 Oct 28 08:12
Subject: Re: [idn] Re: FYI: BOF on Internationalized Email Addresses (IEA)

---

From: James Seng <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 07:26:28 +0800

Crispin,

You need to get out of US (or Wsshington) more often.

-James Seng

---

From: James Seng <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 07:32:46 +0800

> mastery of Han script (which takes many years).

Nope. Hanyu Pinyin was designed to replace the Han ideograph but it 
never did.

> not include the ability to recognize that this refers to a domesticated

Based on your reasonings, I think we should all reverted back to 
numbers, because that is the only universal recongizable set of symbols 
we have.

We have this argument in IDN before and we certainly dont need this 
again. If you feel we should all stick to Latin, yes, you are entitled 
to your opinion but please do so in other place, and not here. The group 
is suppose to work on Internationalization of Email address 
(identifiers), not debate whether we need it or not.

-James Seng

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:44:56 -0500

> (identifiers), not debate whether we need it or not.

Any group that addresses "how" and "for which contexts" without having
a good grasp on "why" is inventing solutions in search of problems.

Mark actually *does* have a *very* valid point - on today's internet, if you
cannot recognize and enter the glyphs for at least c, h, m, o p, t, w, ':',
'@', '.', and '/' you are effectively unable to use the internet.  It may not
make any sense to you, but you can at least recognize and enter them (note that
this same issue was one of the biggest arguments against the .biz domain).

So.. having established that if they're currently using the internet, they can at least
recognize and enter the Latin glyphs, this raises a number of *very* important questions:

1) Is there reason to *not* expect said knowledge of Latin glyphs in the future?
If not, what user group(s) will be literate but not know the Latin charset?

2) Is a "community" approach acceptable?  Is usage of Han OK as long as
you're interacting with other Han users, or are the issues of leakage too high?

3) What *are* the issues of leakage? What am I expected to see if I get some Han,
and how am I to interact with it?  Equally important, what does the Han user do
with my leaked Latin-A characters?

4) Here's a somewhat related issue - looking at the U0100.pdf from www.unicode,org,
I had to enlarge page 2 quite a bit before I could see the difference between the glyphs
at 0114/0115 (capital/small e with breve) and 011A/011B (capital/small e with caron).
And I know my way around most of the Latin characters - our hypothetical Han
user is going to be swinging in the breeze if he gets a business card with e-caron on it.

And if you can't safely put e-caron on a business card, why are we bothering?

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 01:24:33 -0500

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 13:33:31 +0800, Tan Tin Wee said:
> And if they need to send email to outsiders, then they would
> send in ASCII email address, as routinely as they would

OK.. I get that part.  Now for the big question:  You're there in this
Mongolian intranet, and find you need to ask me a technical question,
so my address gets entered in ascii. OK so far.  You now decide you
need to cc: somebody on the intranet so they know I've been asked.

1) What does that person do with my ascii-fied address?
2) How do I do a 'reply all' to both of you?

3) How is your From: address encoded so it's usable *BOTH* from where
I am and from where your co-worker is?  

3a) Can you achieve goal (3) while using the same From: as you would use
if you were mailing ONLY to the intranet (so people don't have to maintain
2 differently encoded values for your address for filtering purposes, etc).

If whatever Mongolia was doing was guaranteed to stay in Mongolia, it wouldn't
be an issue.  However, people inside the enclave *will* want to communicate
with outsiders as well - and the instant you allow an e-mail to cross the
border, you have to get all these types of issues sorted out.

Mark Crispin's point was that currently, knowledge of Latin glyphs *is*
assumed, and as far as anybody has evidenced, this hypothetical Mongolian
intranet with many non-Latin-aware users is still hypothetical - and with no
evidence saying there actually IS one in the works someplace.  So Mark quite
reasonably pointed out that it may very well make more *engineering* sense to
simply train the very small number of users who don't know Latin glyphs than to
come up with some very convoluted scheme that annoys everybody else.

The tail has to be a certain size before it's able to wag the dog.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:09:24 -0800

Valdis,

VKve> Mark actually *does* have a *very* valid point - on today's internet, if you

1. The goal is to go beyond today's internet. (But then, that is always the
goal of a new standard.)

2. Although the primary focus of IETF work is to make standards for global
interoperability, there are fine and valid needs for making global conventions
to support local interoperability. Permitting local-part to be unicode is one
of those. (And, no, I do not believe this requires changing the global parsing
rules.)

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <dcrocker-at-brandenburg-dot-com>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 06:49:13 -0600

Ummm, I'm not a Genius of E-mail, but I have sent a few. :-}

The very-helpful scenario Valdis included a couple of notes back ("if
we punt on common ability to use Latin glyphs") has happened in my
life, at the presentation level - I've been swapping e-mail back and
forth with some very talented people in Korea. So, they have
ascii-fied e-mail addresses that aren't THAT obvious (I think spencer,
or dcrocker, or even vinton.c.cerf, is pretty obvious, but my three
kids are daddys_little_hurl (April), buddha20oz(Daniel), and
gypsycameo(Amy), so you're not going to figure out who's been copied
just by looking at e-mail addresses in the general case), and
presentation names that are localized, so I can't read them. If a
collaborator copies three people who I can't decode from the e-mail
address, and can't read from the presentation name, I can't figure out
if another researcher has been copied or not, without asking.

If I can't read the characters in the local part of the e-mail
address, there's even less chance I'll be able to figure out who's
been copied (and usually, figuring out who hasn't been copied is more
interesting, in my limited experience) - I know I'm going to regret
not reading Korean when I'm at IETF 59, but today, I don't read
Korean. Game over..

I agree with Dave in the general case ("the goal is to go beyond
today's Internet"), but am wondering if that also requires us to go
beyond today's language capability when we start leaking these
addresses between enclaves. I am sensitive to the comments expressed
in this thread, that a heckuva lot of people have to learn two sets of
glyphs, and I'm not one of them - I just don't see how we do it any
other way.

Oh, yeah - the other thing was, discussion about leaking out of a
Mongolian enclave is interesting, but leaking between two non-Latin
enclaves is where the rubber meets the road, and I've worked with too
many smart people from Asia/Pacific and from the Middle East to
believe that we wouldn't have two non-Latin enclaves who would be
collaborating about fifteen minutes after the second enclave starts
up...

Spencer

p.s. Because I'm not a Genius of Internationalization, I apologize for
using country names as if they were character sets in advance - hope
my comment is still somewhat clear.

p.p.s. If we DO discover life on Mars, I'm willing to change my mind.
I know my stepson would love ro have an excuse to learn
Martian/Klingon/etc....

---

From: Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 08:44:03 -0500

On Thu October 30 2003 07:49, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

 > leaking between two non-Latin
 > enclaves is where the rubber meets the road,

Specifically, two enclaves with *different* non-Latin character sets.  
(Probably what you meant, but....)

 > I've worked with too many smart people from Asia/Pacific and
 > from the Middle East to believe that we wouldn't have two
 > non-Latin enclaves who would be collaborating about fifteen
 > minutes after the second enclave starts up...

Exactly.  The developinging friendship between Israel and India, two 
tech powerhouses using radically different non-Latin character sets, 
should be quite interesting in many ways, including this.

For that matter, even within India, there are several (somewhere in the 
teens, IIRC) languages widely used.  Can someone tell us, how many 
different character sets these languages use?

-- 
Dave Aronson, Senior Software Engineer, Secure Software Inc.
Email me at: work (D0T) 2004 (@T) dja (D0T) mailme (D0T) org
Web: http://destined.to/program http://listen.to/davearonson

---

From: Tan Tin Wee <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 13:33:31 +0800

> a good grasp on "why" is inventing solutions in search of problems.
[snipped]

> And if you can't safely put e-caron on a business card, why are we bothering?

We're bothering because it has occurred to some of us that
some folks somewhere in the world may wish to send email only to
themselves within an intranet or a large national intranet or
wish to launch their own internal e-government or
e-education system that involves interpersonal
and interdepartmental communications amongst folks that
speak the same language which doesn't not happen to be Latin-based.
And if they need to send email to outsiders, then they would
send in ASCII email address, as routinely as they would
flipping between the reverse and obverse of their
namecards, one side the local language (including their
local IEA address) and the other, the global lingua franca
latin.

Right now, the Mongolian (or whatever) government cannot launch say
their e-Government intranet email system seamlessly with
the Internet without much pain in getting everyone up to
speed on the latin character set. IEA support will definitely
be a boon to such folks.

---

From: Steve Dyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 07:58:27 +0000

At 01:24 30/10/2003 -0500, [email-masked] wrote:
> >snip

Hi

The above is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Of course you have to have a 
knowledge of Latin glyphs because the only Internet around is based on it.
The millions of people (including Mongolians) who don't know latin glyphs 
(and may not yet have computers, and may be illiterate) are still the 
future users, possibly the majority of future users, of the Internet and 
this effort is to address their future needs.

My observation is that we are maybe worrying too much about the characters 
being represented and how they are used, We should merely define a 
protocol. In my book that protocol should allow email addresses to carry 
the widest possible eight-bit ASCII payload. (ie. everything except control 
characters) so that existing non-unicode special characters can be carried, 
and can also carry IDN-style unicoded characters.

Sure there will be problems, - there will be anyway. However we need to 
enable local users to communicate in local scripts in the local language.

In this regard Europeans and Americans are maybe too steeped in the 
existing latin/ASCII to address this issue.  We should listen carefully to 
the non-latin world rather than trying to find reasons not to do it.

I often get completely incomprehensible emails which originated in 
non-latin scripts - I just delete them. I know they're not important for me 
because no author who tries to write to me in Chinese is going to get very 
far no matter what communication medium he uses. Why? Because I don't speak 
Chinese.

>The tail has to be a certain size before it's able to wag the dog.

This dog is almost all tail!

Regards

Steve Dyer

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 09:13:55 -0800

Forget Mongolian. Think Chinese and Hindi, plus related languages that
use their character sets. Between the two of them you have nearly 3
billion potential users, i.e. half the world's population. Admittedly
not all of them are literate, and many do understand the Latin character
set, but this is still a very large group to disenfranchise.

There is a second thread to your argument which I object to. Just
because many Internet users can understand the Latin character set does
not mean they do not want to send stuff in their native character set,
or be forced to use the Latin character set. Of course so far we have
made it impossible to do so. I do not understand the difficulty in
making the software 8-bit byte clean - it does not need to understand
what the characters are - just that they are different from each other.
It does not even need to know that one character actually takes three
bytes to specify. In fact, there is an encoding, UTF-8, that makes most
program changes unnecessary, since it maps 128 ASCII 1:1. Then let the
users decide what they want to do.

Why place unnecessary restrictions on the Internet just because it
results in messages that you personally can't understand?

[email-masked] wrote:
>     ---------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>                Part 1.2   Type: application/pgp-signature

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:44:06 -0500

> set, but this is still a very large group to disenfranchise.

Right.  The yet unanswered question is how many would be disenfranchised
by making them learn the Latin charset, compared to how many would
be disenfranchised by a non-perfect globalization scheme (see my comment
yesterday regarding macrons and carons).

> made it impossible to do so.

Note that this is discussing *addresses only*.  We've had charset
support for bodyparts and 2047-encoding for other header fields for *years*.

I get at least 5 or 6 emails a day that have addresses of the form
From: "kanji/big5/etc string here" <[email-masked]>
and/or have charset=utf-8 and kanji in them.

> results in messages that you personally can't understand?

An equally important consideration is that it result in messages that
are *usable* (possibly without comprehension). If whatever scheme we
decide on results in messages that I can't hit "reply" to or otherwise
process, it's not doing anybody any favors.

An often overlooked aspect of the ASCII charset is that it has 52 glyphs
which for the most part are visually distinctive (except for zero/oh, and
one/lower-ell), so even a non-speaker can make a determination "have I
entered the same glyphs as are on the business card?". This is not true
for any of the Asian glyph sets (at least *I* can't tell easily), and I
don't think that the Latin 1/A/B extension has this property either,
once you start dealing with macrons, cedillas, ogonceks, carons, dots,
and other ornamentation....

So my question remains:  are we doing the 3 billion asians a favor by forcing
them to be able to tell the difference between e-caron and e-breve?

Are we doing *anybody* favors if we make them use rfc3490-style xn-- strings
that are totally incomprehensible if they are from outside the local conclave?
Remember - if they don't understand Latin charsets, a 3490-encoded address will
be *painful*, even for the *owner*.  You don't believe me? Take the character
string 'valdis.kletnieks', change the first e to 0113 (small e-macron), punycode it,
and let me know how much mnemonic value it has.

And remember - the string you get there is the sort of thing that all 3 billion
Asians will get to enter (after I get my sysadmin to set up the aliases to get that
punycode to actually drop into *my* mailbox).

Are you sure it's worth the effort?

It's not that I'm unsympathetic to the goals - far from it.  It's just that I
was there during the RFC2047 wars (which are *still* going on in the spam
world, silly spammers sending around untagged 8-bit headers), and a big part
of me wants to say "Oh no, not again....".

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:34:40 -0700 (MST)

> From: [email-masked]
> To: [email-masked]
> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]

> ...
> Are we doing *anybody* favors ...

Contrary to super heated claims about unfairness and disenfranchisement,
the purposes of this approaching train wreck do not include doing any
users any favors.  At best it is about proving the maturity of the
IETF by inventing a scheme that will make x.400 addresses seem clear
and obvious.

The first and most important thing about train wrecks is that you
don't want to be standing close to where they happen.  After waiving
your lantern at the people in the engine cabs, it's best run as fast
as you can.

The second thing is that after the fire, smoke, and noise settles,
you will see armies of people and equipment working on enormous piles
of debris.

The third thing is that although the debris piles and surrounding
encampments will look permanent, they will disappear almost overnight
and leave almost no sign.  In 5 years, everyone except the most laggard
acolytes of trade rag gurus will have forgotten it.  By then there
will be a new runaway internationalization mail address train about
to derail. 

It's not as if we've not been here before.  It's past time to start
running to get out of the way of this train.  Who knows?  Maybe this
time time the internationalized mail address train won't wreck itself
at the bottom of the pass.

In other words, do all three of these mailing lists need this traffic?

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Markus Stumpf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:24:46 +0100

> glyphs, and I'm not one of them - I just don't see how we do it any

In Europe we have a lot of character sets. I use 8859-1, a few
kilometers away in Greece they use 8859-7. As with all the math
I at least have an idea about the characters. However neither my
keyboard nor my X server can currently be used for that out of the
box (as it is).

IMHO in all that discussion it is important with the "case studies"
to differentiate if the address has to be keyed in by some human
or if I would only need more sophisticated software to deal with the
problem.

I am not too enthusiastic with all that internationalization, but:

- In Germany the DENIC has announced they will provide internationalized
  domain names probably next year. The run on this names is really big.
  Other NICs surely have similar plans. So with these domain names we
  need a method to transport email there.

- If I want to go to the olypic games in Greece next year and the website
  has an email address with greek characters, will I be able to click on it
  type some text, and my MUA/browser will do the right thing? If it will
  work and everyone will be able to recognize "this is the email address"
  that's fine for me. XML for more structure and better browsers will help
  for the latter some time.

- How long will there be paper business cards? Don't a lot people
  already exchange business cards per handheld/organizer? And those
  companies with international contacts will have accounts in the
  according coding or at least in a coding that is familiar for the
  other party. Software will be able to do the rest. So you will have to
  carry a small bag of different cards with different codings until you
  will have no paper cards any longer, because they are too difficult to
  handle in this area.
  A big fair in Munich had tested kinda electronic cards lately. As you
  buy your ticket you type in your contact data and it is printed on the
  card as a barcode. Exhibitors had barcode readers and special
  software, so if you want to make a contact you hand over your ticket
  and the infos flow ...

There WILL be a lot of problems with internationalized email addresses
but IMHO a lot of them will be solvable by sophisticated software.
Some of them won't as in print media (and also tv. radio, ...) a domain
    µ.de	(in 8859-1)
and
    µ.de	(in 8859-7)
looks identical, but isn't as the µ sit on different codes. So the
commercials will be fun:
    "visit us in the Internet on www.µ.de in good old 8859-1 coding."

And despite all these I think it will be a long time until addresses like
    [email-masked]
will look familiar (even if this is a (for me) local coding).

	\Maex

-- 
SpaceNet AG            | Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 | Fon: +49 (89) 32356-0
Research & Development |       D-80807 Muenchen    | Fax: +49 (89) 32356-299
"The security, stability and reliability of a computer system is reciprocally
 proportional to the amount of vacuity between the ears of the admin"

---

From: jfcm <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 04:02:22 +0100

>software, so if you want to make a contact you hand over your ticket

Markus,
We are here in a typical layer violation we do not see. We think that 
passing information from layer 7 to a user is a simple task because ascii 
simplifies it to ascii readers. ENS Model puts 2 layers for that.

Your example is a very good common example of this:
- the application layer (7) has an infromation: the visitor carries and 
delivers his name to the registration system
- the interapplication layer (8) corresponds to the trade show system which 
organizes and manages the bar codes or other systems (magnetic, noise 
printing, laser, etc.) and the event and the lanes for him to stop at your 
boot using his feet and not bytes on a wire.
- the assistant layer (9) which is going to read the information for you 
and/or for your computer.
- until eventually you the user (layer 10) may access to the infromation 
and possibly disseminate to other layer 10 colleagues or colleges, or to 
escalate it to other communicating structures (11). For example the visitor 
may be a common client for your trade pavillon and benefit from a discount. 
And then you may want to verify his legal ID and hit the societal system 
layer (12).

All these layers car be executed by people and by machines. The simplest 
protocol is yes/no. It then increases in complexity through numbers, then 
langages and characters. Basic English and ASCII are one of the most 
interesting level for naked brainq. But what about computer (software) or 
community assisted (brainware) brains: whre is/are the most interesting 
levels of equilibrium?

This is why I say the target is not to develop internationalized, nor 
multilingual names. To please  Hindi vs American (objections stand). But a 
truly fully vernacular support for users and applications. This means even 
more than transparent binary, because binary is only to be one occurence in 
it.

We have a default : ascii. We have a first level of complexity : IDNA. This 
must continue. This is why I objected to the (xn--) structure. It is to be 
necessarily the begining of an unlimited vernacularisation. Having entered 
the xn-- in the left of the name label introduced a cross hierarchical 
structure in the DNS (levels from right to left and layers within the 
labels from left to right). With a complex impact on the DNS administration 
and evolution - as we start seeing it now. Another exemple is IPv6. I doubt 
we can continue writing manually db.flles addresses.

Now, several question the need of a change. IMHO they are right and wrong 
as we do not consider the layers. At the user's layer we must have 
everything in the language and culture of the user. We are not going to say 
that cultures are bugs to correct to fit IDNA! But at the old SMTP level or 
DNS do we need that complexity? I think not. Even if we were building a 
brand nwe DNS.

What Vint suggests is to use ASCII as a 35 or 37 highly readable numbering 
pad (2 to 9 A to Z and "-", or 0 to 9) to give more capacities to support 
vernacularization on the layer above. Otherwise everything is going to 
collapse into a too complex system. For example where are you going to 
introduce the OPES which will read the written chinese in the proper local 
way? This is the same problem as for the multilingual TLDs. In a flat model 
we saw it was not possible. I do not see a real problem in a properly set 
multi-layer model. One layer can go one way and the next layer the other 
way. Then you know what you wand to do where.

jfc

---

From: Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 08:59:28 -0500

On Thu October 30 2003 17:24, Markus Stumpf wrote:

 >   already exchange business cards per handheld/organizer?

IMHO, always, even for ones with email addresses (and URLs and so on) on 
them.  Even those who lug PDAs around everywhere, may occasionally have 
reason to give contact data to someone who doesn't.

Think also of many businesses that cater to the general public, from 
bleeding-edge geeks like us, to those who can barely spell PDA and 
don't know what one is.  Sure, such a business has many clientele who 
wouldn't make use of the email address, URL, etc.  However, that's 
usually not enough to justify leaving them off.

Can we have a show of hands of those people who, when giving or 
receiving contact data in person, do so *only* by transmitting between 
PDAs?  (If you prefer, feel free to reply directly.  I'll announce 
results and comments received.)  I'm guessing that describes far less 
than a single percent of us, never mind the world.

-- 
Dave Aronson, Senior Software Engineer, Secure Software Inc.
(Opinions above NOT those of securesw.com unless so stated!)
Email me at: work (D0T) 2004 (@T) dja (D0T) mailme (D0T) org
Web: http://destined.to/program http://listen.to/davearonson

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 09:50:06 -0500

Dave Aronson wrote:

>don't know what one is.
I think the only times I've seen anybody use PDAs to exchange contact 
information were at IETF meetings, in the hallways, when people had time 
to kill.  It just takes too long.  Typically, when two companies are 
meeting, and you've got, say, four people on each side, everybody swaps 
business cards in under a minute, and you're done.  Doing the same thing 
via IR would hold the meeting up too long.

-- 
/==========================================\
|John Stracke      [email-masked]   |
|Principal Engineer|http://www.centive.com |
|Centive           |My opinions are my own.|
|==========================================|
|I have strong opinions about ambivalence. |
\==========================================/

---

From: Jean-Jacques Puig <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 17:11:20 +0100

> via IR would hold the meeting up too long.

Agree. Another point is that many firms print contact / support / sales
mail addresses on documents. So may also individuals in some
circumstances (teachers on the hard copy of their teaching doc,
classified advertisements on newspapers, etc.). Though one may conceive
adverts with a bluetooth device broadcasting contact information, I
believe printed material is still a significant way of obtaining email
addresses and will be so for a long.

Regarding the actual issue (IEA), the technical problem of having to
enter an address in an unknown charset may solve itself almost
naturally: people who feel concerned about being reachable by anyone
abroad would create/buy/ask-their-admin-for a  ascii address, while
others would get locale encoded addresses for a local use. A kind of a
social consensus.

-- 
Jean-Jacques Puig

[homepage] http://www-lor.int-evry.fr/~puig/

---

From: Markus Stumpf <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 22:05:44 +0100

> via IR would hold the meeting up too long.

Please keep in mind two things
1) I wrote
     "I am not too enthusiastic with all that internationalization" ;-))
2) I used the example with PDAs mainly for international contacts. Maybe
   our company is to small, but most of the time I have face to face
   contact to people of foreign companies they are from a local
   subsidiary and they have a local domain on their cards. So with most
   of the meetings (for me at least) this would be a non issue.

	\Maex

---

From: Markus Stumpf <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 22:09:03 +0100

On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 05:11:20PM +0100, Jean-Jacques Puig wrote:
> classified advertisements on newspapers, etc.).

But this is an issue only in this are "cross contacts" to non local
partners. Local partners have the same charset coding so this would
not be a problem at all.

> others would get locale encoded addresses for a local use. A kind of a

And the "default ASCII coding" may change to a "default chinese coding"
in some years ;-)

	\Maex