Re: [ICANN-EU] IDN or: Are users Unicode-aware?

["Roberto Gaetano" <roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com>]

Good evening.

Thomas wrote:
>
>On the other hand, personally, I'm not convinced that IDNs are a
>good idea.  Additionally, I do believe that when they will get into
>widespread use, some administrative proceudres may be needed on the
>registrars' end in order to avoid a great lot of confusion.
>
>Here's why: Domain names are displayed to and memorized, recorded,
>and typed by human beings.  However, this is only possible if the
>human beings in question are able to read and distinguish the
>characters used.  This is nicely guaranteed with phone numbers, and
>it's kind of guaranteed with the current us-ascii character set.
>However, assuming that we are heading towards a world with
>internationalized domain names, this feature won't persist, since -
>even given correctly functioning software, which I doubt will exist
>- users are generally not Unicode-aware.  Europeans just don't read
>Arab or Chinese alphabets in general, and Chinese people won't read
>Hebrew.

Incidentally, the Arabs do not write the numbers the way we do (even if we 
call them "arabic numbers"). But at least there's a 1-to-1 mapping (which 
would not exist in a simple way for ... roman numbers - but that's beside 
the point).
I do not understand why we should make the assumption that everybody will 
read the US-ASCII (BTW, isn't "US" implicit in "ASCII"? I think that what is 
"really" meant is the ASCII 127-char set). You rightfully say "Chinese don't 
read Hebrew". But why then ASCII?


>
>This implies that domain names can't be used globally any more,
>because they can't be typed or read globally (note that phone
>numbers can).  That is, domain names become close to useless as
>globally unique addresses which they, technically, still are.

I disagree.
DN in UNICODE, IMHO, are still unique, and can therefore be used globally 
(by those who can read them). Maybe something escapes me, but if I do 
register a name identified by a UNICODE string that corresponds to the 
Arabic character set, I am clearly identifying my "customers" as people who 
do read Arabic, and that therefore will not have problems in reaching me. I 
would of course choose a Registrar that has this kind of support (I may 
assume that not all Registrars will necessarily register any UNICODE 
string).

>
>Nevertheless, people will happily register domain names with
>national characters in them, and note the problems they create that
>way too late.
>
>I do believe that domain registries should make sure that global
>addressibility in the DNS is preserved - and be it by forcing
>equivalent us-ascii domains upon users.

I understand your point, in terms of the fact that there will be practical 
problems to solve. But in theory, global addressability *will* be preserved. 
Just the 127-ASCII Domain Names will be a subset of the UNICODE Domain 
Names. Just as IPv4 addresses can remain as a subset of IPv6 (oooops, that's 
asking for flames, isn't it?).

>
>(Note that just taking the us-ascii transcription of domain names
>may not be sufficient - the IETF IDN working group's drafts say that
>software merely MAY permit input in that transcription (I think it
>should be a MUST), and, additionally, that transcription isn't that
>much more aesthetic or memorable than a raw IPv6 address.)

Forget transcription.
We have to accept the fact that a Chinese name will be a Chinese name, 
written with Chinese characters, and either we learn Chinese, or we won't be 
able to read it. It will use a subset of the UNICODE that we will not 
recognize (*). But uniqueness will be preserved, if all names are in 
UNICODE.

(*) And what will be the point in recognizing it? Going to that site will 
bring us most probably on a Chinese page, that we won't understand unless we 
read Chinese!

>
>Comments and flames welcome.
>

I did the first part ;>)

Regards
Roberto


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