OT: Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in progress

Slightly veering off course...

It is interesting to me to note how certain conventions have become widely
understood over time by the general users in the UK and US.  For example, if
you say part of an address with more than one word in it, such as
richardishida or bbconlinetips, people tend to assume that there are no
spaces or dots or slashes inbetween - even if they sometimes check by saying
'all one word?' They also seem to assume that a uri is or works in lower
case, unless told otherwise.  It's also a relief that you usually no longer
need to explain the difference between slashes and hyphens, and everyone
knows what dot means.

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
 
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/blog/
http://rishida.net/

 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel Dardailler [mailto:danield@w3.org] 
> Sent: 26 October 2007 13:14
> To: Richard Ishida
> Cc: 'Martin Duerst'; 'Jonathan Rosenne'; 'WWW International'; 
> public-i18n-core@w3.org; 'W3C Offices'
> Subject: Re: Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in progress
> 
> 
> > Yes. My point was that even in English I have taken action 
> to find a 
> > home page address that is more easily memorable and 
> communicable than 
> > people.w3.org/rishida (which is not so complicated to start 
> with, but 
> > sufficiently so to cause problems), so it is clear to me 
> that URIs are 
> > not always opaque, and that furthermore being able to write them in 
> > your own language and script has got to be very helpful.
> 
> I agree. I'm saying two things.
> 
> People should not expect a full coverage of textual 
> expression in DNS space, since it is essentially an ID space 
> similar to file names, not a real content medium.
> 
> (this looks like a simplification but it isn't, DNS is a 
> system with application constraints (e.g. what the browser 
> does), protocols contraints, bind implementation constraints, 
> registry server constraints, registrar commercial 
> constraints, ICANN policy constraints, etc.)
> 
> We're going to face some print/digital compatibility issues 
> that we are unprepared to deal with because of the 
> predominance of the latin ascii subset in today's exchanges 
> (for everybody, not just latin based cultures). RFID will 
> solve that :)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Friday, 26 October 2007 12:26:44 UTC