Comment: Draft Proposal for the Study of Issues Related to the Delegation of IDN Variant TLDs

["Vaggelis Segredakis" <segred@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear IDN Variant Issues Project WG,

 

I would like to bring to your attention that in the document titled "The IDN
Variant Issues Project: A study of Issues Related to the Delegation of IDN
Variant TLDs" it is proposed that five studies need to be conducted to
investigate the set of issues that need to be resolved to facilitate a good
user experience for IDN variant TLDs. In these cases, there is no Greek case
study (only Chinese, Arabic, Latin, Indic and Cyrillic are included). The
Greek IDNs present issues though that could be dealt with by the use of
variants, as proposed in your document.

 

I would like to suggest an example of a Greek word that if it was to
function as a ccTLD it could need multiple domain names to fully facilitate
the user experience.

 

The Greek word "Ελλάς" is the name of our country (Hellas / Greece). As you
can see, this word ends with a final sigma and has the accent mark "tonos"
over the Greek alpha. If we were to spell this word in capital letters, it
becomes "ΕΛΛΑΣ", without the "tonos" and ends at a regular sigma. Even at
this early stage, it is apparent that two different domain names must be
used to fully use the word, since in IDNA2003 these two strings are
translated in the punycode strings xn--hxarsa5b and xn--mxahsa5b. The
IDNA2003 maps final sigma to sigma and only the tonos accent mark creates
the differentiation between these two strings. 

 

In IDNA2008 however, the final sigma becomes a separate character and it is
different than the regular sigma. This way, if you wish to facilitate the
word in every way it could be typed (even in the usual mistypings, without
the "tonos" in lower characters or with "tonos" in case of upper case
letters) a total of up to four strings could be designated to operate
together as one TLD by using the following variants:

 

(Absolutely necessary Variants to facilitate the lower and upper case
letters writing)

Hellas with tonos and final sigma

Hellas without tonos and normal sigma

 

(Possible Variants to cope with frequent mistypings)

Hellas without tonos and final sigma

Hellas with tonos and normal sigma

 

Many other Greek words end with a sigma (male names e.t.c) and the majority
of our words use the "tonos" accent mark, all of them requiring the use of
variants since they are translated into different punycode strings in the
lower and upper case letters. This issue becomes more complicated if a word
uses more than one sigma. 

 

If you take into account these facts I think the Greek case should be
studied as well, along the other cases your document proposed, before the
IDN Variant TLDs are to be delegated.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Vaggelis Segredakis

Administrator of the .GR Top Level Domain

Institute of Computer Science

Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas