Re: URIs and i18n

> It is possible - however, and it is often done for style variation etc - 
> to write Cyrillic in a way that make the letters stand out from Latin.
>
> Has this been considered? Are anyone proposing that? Should not use of 
> fonts which clearly distinguish the different letters and scripts be 
> adviced in these regards?

As Frank points out, the IETF protocols attempt to take a first stab at 
removing characters from the repertoire representing a language that are 
both confusing and unnecessary; registries and other application vendors 
have a large burden to disambiguate whereever possible.

In general, however, advice on the use of distinguishing fonts would be 
similar to us suggesting that Courier be used more often in English 
typography since it provides some clearer demarcations between similar 
letters than other fonts - some people would adopt it, but most would do 
whatever they decide based on style/culture/etc.

> I think the main security risk involved with IRIs and IDNs is that the 
> user is unable to judge for himself what he is reading.

Which is why language groups need to get together to determine what 
characters are confusing across languages (but within a script or script 
family) and arrive at reasonable methods to identify these variants so that 
appropriate protocol or policy rules can be set.

Received on Saturday, 2 August 2008 09:43:49 UTC