Re: IRI BOF followup

Hello Shawn,

Many thanks for your feedback on the charter.

On 2009/12/09 8:50, Shawn Steele wrote:
> I guess that covers some of my concerns, but the draft charter isn't clear if this is covered.
>
> Regarding draft-duerst-iri-bis specifically, I think that we need to consciously seek native BIDI speakers.

The current design, both for IDNA(2003) and RFC 3987, was strongly 
influenced by Mati Allouche, a top Bidi expert and native Bidi writer 
(the term "BIDI speaker" is a bit strange, as bidi only is an issue when 
written). I have cc'ed him.

> Some previous IDN work seems to have missed that (don't know about IRI), so it might be good to include that "we will get input from native RTL speakers."
>
> Chatting with Arabic-speaking colleagues and input from the Saudi government would expect very different behavior from what martin proposes.   Specifically they native speakers seem to treat the different parts as a list that progresses in a single direction.  Eg: http://ab.CDE.FGH/ij/kl/mn/op.html is parsed as a list {http, ab, cde, fgh, ij,kl, mn, op(.html?)}  So the expected rendering would be from the one end of the list to the other.

I can tell you that something along these lines would very much be my 
expectation, too (even not being native). The real problem with bidi for 
IDNs and IRIs is that we are between a rock and a hard place.

It's not too difficult to get input from native speakers on what might 
look best. But what's really difficult is to conciliate that input with 
the rest of the requirements for bidi IDN or IRI display. There are 
mainly two:

1) Bidi IRIs have to be displayed consistently everywhere they appear, 
or we get hopeless user confusion and another attack surface for scams.

2) The display chosen has to work in running text, without knowing that 
there's an IDN or IRI, or where it starts or ends.

It is very important that we keep these goals (for more details, please 
see the IDAN 2008 bidi draft, which spells them out more explicitly in 
an IDN context) in mind both for the charter and for our actual work.


Below a few more technical explanations and comments, not directly 
relevant to the charter.


> Furthermore, in an RTL/BIDI context, those users seem to prefer that the list be rendered from RTL.  In other words:
>
> ???/mn/kl/ij/HGF.EDC.ab//:http

I think that the current requirement of an LTR context for IRIs may be 
too strong, and that in particular for absolute IRIs, the potential for 
confusion would not be much bigger if we allowed both LTR and RTL 
context, but I think we need to be very careful about that. If we went 
that way, that would allow

???/ij/kl/mn/HGF.EDC.http//:ab

(not very helpful, but that's as good as it gets if you let the bidi 
algorithm do its work), or more importantly,

???/NM/LK/JI/HGF.EDC.AB//:http


> I even got the expectation that in an Arabic browser they'd expect to see:
>
> com.microsoft//:http

What Mati has explained to me is that those users that think mostly 
logically and internally (that includes most of us tech guys) and who 
know how a domain name and an IRI parses may indeed expect 
com.microsoft. However, more visually oriented people with less 
understanding of the syntax and what's behind it (which means the 
majority of the population) may be better served by seeing 
"microsoft.com" as "microsoft.com" independent of context. This is 
essentially what the bidi algorithm tries to do for natural running 
text, namely to keep sequences of LTR words in an internally LTR 
direction, even in an overall RTR context. Thus, you can see something like:

    CIBARA CIBARA hello world CIBARA CIBARA

as quite equivalent to:

    CIBARA CIBARA microsoft.com CIBARA CIBARA

> The ??? is because I don't know what the expectation of the file "op.html" is.  Is it expected to be a single unit, or 2 parts?  I didn't ask that question.

What happens with such a thing in places in Arabic/Hebrew (or just any 
other) Windows where that's displayed (in particular for OP.html)?

> So I think this needs a serious usability study on the part of the WG.

I don't think IETF WGs are good at doing usability studies. Larry's text 
about explicit review is more along the lines of what an IETF WG 
typically does, and is fine by me except for the "of ..., of" repetition 
and the use of "native speakers", which in this context really has to be 
"native writers". But these are details which can be fixed later.

Regards,   Martin.

> -Shawn
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-iri-request@w3.org [mailto:public-iri-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Larry Masinter
> Sent: ??????, ???????? 08, ??? 2009 14:11
> To: Shawn Steele; public-iri@w3.org
> Subject: RE: IRI BOF followup
>
> The current document has extensive work on BIDI in it already.
> Are there particular points or requirements that aren't already in scope by way of already being mentioned in draft-duerst-iri-bis?
>
> Larry
> --
> http://larry.masinter.net
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Shawn Steele [mailto:Shawn.Steele@microsoft.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 11:53 AM
> To: Larry Masinter; public-iri@w3.org
> Subject: RE: IRI BOF followup
>
> I would like to see BIDI presentation explicitly called out.  It seems to be something that isn't working very well and maybe hasn't gotten enough expert attention in the past.  It could be part of the Internationalization BCP, but I think it should be called out.
>
> -Shawn
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-iri-request@w3.org [mailto:public-iri-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Larry Masinter
> Sent: ??????, ???????? 08, ??? 2009 11:42
> To: public-iri@w3.org
> Subject: FW: IRI BOF followup
>
> FYI (should have sent this more broadly); we're trying to prep for the IESG review of forming an IRI working group.
>
> Please review proposed charter ASAP.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Larry Masinter
> Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 10:46 AM
> To: '"Martin J. Dürst"'; Alexey Melnikov
> Cc: Pete Resnick; Ted Hardie; Lisa Dusseault
> Subject: RE: IRI BOF followup
>
> I made a pass over the draft charter to update the dates, deliverables, and to tweak Martin's wording. I made it clear that the only purpose of splitting the draft would be to facilitate editing.
>
> Larry
>
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>
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>
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>

-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

Received on Friday, 11 December 2009 10:04:18 UTC