RE: URIs and i18n

> Another possibility would be to use IRIs, but most people would end-up
> having difficulties typing them and that would make them harder to
remember.

Well, people who don't write or speak the language of the person identified,
that is.  (And maybe we should exclude a bunch of people like those on this
list.)  

This is an interesting question.  I guess Jean-Gui is looking for URIs that
can be read/written/recognized/remembered by an international audience,
which is why he feels he needs to use ASCII only, rather than IRIs.

Any thoughts on the matter?

RI

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/



> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-international-request@w3.org [mailto:www-international-
> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Jean-Guilhem Rouel
> Sent: 28 July 2008 19:03
> To: www-international@w3.org
> Subject: URIs and i18n
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am currently writing a webapp which has URIs of the form
> http://example.org/users/fran-ois.berl-and where fran-ois is a first
> name, berl-and a family name and '-' replaces non-ASCII characters. So
> fran-ois.berl-and could represent someone named François Berléand.
> 
> Now, I would like to have more "beautiful" URIs, like
> http://example.org/users/francois.berleand.
> 
> I am wondering if there's a standard or something defining how to
> "translate" non-ASCII characters to ASCII ones, be they French special
> chars, Japanese ones or anything else.
> 
> If not, is it wise to try to do such a transcription? I don't know if
> that makes a difference but the tool will be targeted at
> English-speaking people (but the names can be from any culture).
> 
> Another possibility would be to use IRIs, but most people would end-up
> having difficulties typing them and that would make them harder to
remember.
> 
> Finally, I could let users choose their ASCII-only URI. I think that's
> what I'm going to do as it's easier for me and the least likely to
> offend people, but I would have liked to get your feedback on this topic.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jean-Gui

Received on Monday, 28 July 2008 18:18:53 UTC