RE: [alac] FW: Review and Recommendations for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)

["Roberto Gaetano" <roberto@xxxxxxxxx>]

The way I see the thing is that there is a user need for domain names in
different scripts.
As a matter of fact, I do agree with Hong, the "internationalized" adjective
is somehow misleading, and is, IMHO, a creation of engineers, not users.
Again, I agree with Hong on the fact that the vast majority Korean users
have no interest (although exceptions might exist) in Yiddish script being
available, and vice-versa.

The question is whether the DNS, as universal solution, can be extended to
allow this to happen, still maintaining the universality of the tool. I have
no prejudice on whether this can be achieved by WASP engineers, or by the
new (Korean) Secretary-General of the United Nations, as long as this is
done.
However, if the answer is: "It cannot be done within a reasonable time", the
counter-answer of the users, contrary to popular belief in the WASP Engineer
community, is not going to be: "Oh, well, too bad, in that case we stick to
Latin script", but: "Oh, well, we'll find a workaround that works for our
script and our community, too bad for the universality of the Internet,
because that is by and large not my main concern". Examples of this already
abund.

I have no opinion on whether Vittorio is right or wrong. But seeing the
discussion from over the fence, I tend to think that the attitude of the
engineers is not the perfect strategy for gathering user support. In a world
that has changed, and is still changing, where the end user needs are
becoming more and more important as a driver for change, this is likely to
become the path to obsolescence.

Cheers,
Roberto Gaetano
ALAC
ICANN Board Liaison
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-alac@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-alac@xxxxxxxxx] On 
> Behalf Of John L
> Sent: 18 October 2006 06:26
> To: Hong Xue
> Cc: Vittorio Bertola; alac@xxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [alac] FW: Review and Recommendations for 
> Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)
> 
> > All the difficulties are caused by forcing the localized solutions 
> > into the internationalized context. If it had not been some 
> corporate
> > giant(s) that zealously pursued commercial interests by starting 
> > registration of domain names in non-Latin scripts and thus 
> framed this 
> > issue into the DNS, all kinds of localized 
> solutions--probably at the 
> > application level above the DNS--would have developing steadily and 
> > healthly.
> 
> We have e-mail in all sorts of non-latin scripts.  We have 
> web pages and search engines and IM and dozens of other 
> applications as well.  It seems to me that we have all sorts 
> of localized solutions to finding resources.
> 
> It would be entirely reasonable to declare that the DNS and 
> Unicode simply don't fit together, so we're not going to try, 
> and DNS names are just strings that aren't supposed to mean 
> anything in any language (a viewpoint already endorsed by the 
> owners of domains like 7m2s.biz.) Unfortunately, the IDN 
> monster has escaped far enough that I doubt we can kill it now.
> 
> The technical IDN community believes that it is a technical 
> requirement to represent all languages equally well with 
> IDNs.  They made a big mistake once to invent a DNS that 
> handles English* but no other languages, and they're not 
> willing to make that mistake again.
> 
> Compounding the problem, IDNs for some languages work just 
> fine.  For languages like French or German that have 
> character sets only slightly larger than English, or (as I 
> understand it) for Chinese and Japanese that have large 
> character sets but straightforward typography, the current 
> punycode system works.  The languages that are left out are 
> the ones from the parts of the world that are already on the 
> wrong side of the digital divide with poor access and high 
> prices.  Do we really want to say, too bad, we're using a 
> half-way IDN technology and they lose again?
> 
> R's,
> John
> 
> * - and, I suppose, Hawaiian and a few other minor languages 
> that use only ASCII characters