RE: [ssac-gnso-irdwg] Re: Variants

["Owen Smigelski" <Owen.Smigelski@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

 

Apologies for my limited participation lately, I have been busy/out of the 
office with the birth of my second son.

 

I have some thoughts regarding the number of localized languages/scripts to be 
considered.  As detailed by Steve during the last call, there could be dozens 
(if not hundreds of languages) for Indian and Chinese variations (as is also 
likely in a number of other countries, particularly in Africa).  While India 
does indeed have several hundred mother tongues, it only has 2 official 
languages (Hindi and English).  There are 27 other languages recognized by 
individual Indian states, but on a national level there are only 2.  As for 
Chinese, there are dozens of variants used by sinophones.  Standard Mandarin is 
the one recognized as an official language (in mainland China, Taiwan, and 
Singapore), and most (all?) spoken dialects utilize either Traditional or 
Simplified Chinese scripts.  

 

Is it safe to assume then that anyone in India who wants to transact business 
with the federal government must know (or translate to) Hindi or English, and 
anyone in PRC must be able to use Mandarin in Simplified Chinese?  If that is 
indeed the case, then focusing on official languages (rather than every spoken 
or recognized language) would significantly reduce the number of localized 
languages/scripts anticipated by this group.  It should not be a significant 
burden for registrants in those countries to utilize the official languages, 
which are further standardized and thus easy to transliterate/translate into 
other languages.  

 

Regards,

 

Owen   

 

 

From: owner-ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx] 
On Behalf Of Julie Hedlund
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 06:32
To: Edmon Chung; Steve Sheng; 'Greg Aaron'; 'Yao Jiankang'; Ram Mohan
Cc: 'Jeremy Hitchcock'; Dave Piscitello; Ird
Subject: [ssac-gnso-irdwg] Re: Variants

 

Dear all,

I am copying the IRD-WG list on this discussion so that those on the list may 
follow it and so the discussion can be archived.   Please continue to include 
the list in your discussion.  Thank you.

Best regards,

Julie


On 7/19/10 8:05 PM, "Edmon Chung" <edmon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

As a matter of broad policy, strict requirements may not be appropriate, i.e. 
as in specifying exactly which variants MUST be displayed and how.
As you have pointed out, it is possible that different countries would have 
different needs for the issue.
 
In general however, I would think delegated variants (i.e. those in the 
zonefile) should be included, and that might be a good recommendation.
 
It is also possible to envision displaying part of the language table (e.g. the 
rows for the characters involved), or have a link to the table so that 
interested users can further check what else would be reserved.
 
For the IANA whois however, I think we should/could make some specific policy.
At this time, I think the handling of .中国 (.XN--FIQS8S) and .中國 (.XN--FIQZ9S) 
is simply wrong.  They appear to be 2 separate entries in the IANA whois and 
neither mentions the other.  For IANA whois:
1. the primary ("base" or "submitted" or "applied for") should always be 
displayed as the "Delegation Record for" field
2. there should be a field to display the delegated variant(s)
3. user should be able to query the whois by the primary or the variant (and 
end up at the same record)
4. the delegation should be considered to be one record (instead of 2 chinas)
 
Edmon
 
 
 
 

From: Steve Sheng [mailto:steve.sheng@xxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 7:19 AM
To: Greg Aaron; Yao Jiankang; Ram Mohan; Steve Sheng; Edmon Chung
Cc: Jeremy Hitchcock; Julie Hedlund; Dave Piscitello
Subject: Re: Variants

Dear all, 

  Thank you for your support for the IRD working group, particularly on the 
issue of variants. I would like to engage you in the background and see if we 
could come up with some good solution. 

  I know Greg is not part of the IRD working group, but I would like to include 
you since you have been most active in discussions on this topic. 

  In our slides for Brussels, we have put forth the following proposal: 
a) WHOIS port 43 clients must be able to accept a user query of domain name in 
either U-label or A-label;  b) WHOIS clients must be able display result of 
queries in both U- and A label for the domain names; and  c) Bundled 
representation of a single A or U-label query should be returned. 

By bundled representation, we mean variants. 

Greg raised an issue about supporting variants in Indian languages, that there 
may be tens and potentially hundreds of variants for a given U-label. The 
Chinese situation is similar, since the Chinese IDN label allowed mixing of 
traditional and simplified scripts, the number of variants can easily reach 
ten. 

For a given domain, CNNIC only put two types of variants into DNS, all 
traditional and all simplified and reserved the rest. If we use this approach, 
we could require WHOIS to display the variants that are available in the DNS. 

This seems to solve the problem for display, but what about query? Can a user 
query any of the variant for a Chinese domain, and get the simplified and 
traditional variant back? Is that satisfactory? 

Coming back to the Indian language, would the above solution work? A query of 
any of the variants for an Indian domain would return variants only in the DNS 
table. 

Warmly, 
Steve 




On 6/24/10 12:22 PM, "Greg Aaron" <gaaron@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A query for a reserved variant could return a result in WHOIS, perhaps listing 
the parent domain’s WHOIS data.  
However, if one looks up a parent, WHOIS output should not necessarily return 
the parent’s data PLUS a listing of all active and/or reserved variants.  (To 
do so could create an exceptionally long output, as per some of the scenarios I 
mentioned below.)
 
Some registries might handle variant activation and/or resolution differently.  
Which might be a perfectly reasonable and allowable implementation.  Worth 
checking out how practice might vary while being within RFCs and IDNA.  
 
All best,
--Greg
 
 
 

From: Yao Jiankang [mailto:yaojk@xxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 10:21 AM
To: Greg Aaron; 'Steve Sheng'
Cc: 'Dave Piscitello'; 'Edmon Chung'; 'Jeremy Hitchcock'; 'James M Galvin 
(Afilias)'
Subject: Re: Variants


 

 

the current practice for cnnic is that we list the variants which are put into 
dns.

sometimes three variants, sometimes two variants.

 

as far as I know, .AU will put all variants into dns. so the whois should list 
all variants.

 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Greg Aaron <mailto:gaaron@xxxxxxxxxxxx>  

To: 'Jiankang YAO' <mailto:yaojk@xxxxxxxx>  ; 'Steve Sheng' 
<mailto:steve.sheng@xxxxxxxxx> 

Cc: 'Dave Piscitello' <mailto:dave.piscitello@xxxxxxxxx>  ; 'Edmon Chung' 
<mailto:edmon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>  ; 'Jeremy Hitchcock' <mailto:jeremy@xxxxxxx>  ; 
'James M Galvin (Afilias)' <mailto:jgalvin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>  

Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 7:17 PM

Subject: RE: Variants

 

 
Notes:
 
・         If you look up a domain, should the WHOIS output also list all the 
variants? 

 

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