Re: one-language solutions, localised DNS and internationalised DNS?

["Martin J. Duerst" <duerst@w3.org>]

At 10:59 00/01/25 +0800, Hualin Qian wrote:
> Dear Tan:

Many thanks to Tan to remind us about the importance of our work!


> > I agree with your comments on the need to move to a worldwide solution,
> > quickly and smoothly. Otherwise, the mess will be difficult to solve.
> > For example, we just heard that in China, CNNIC is proposing the use 
> > of multiple roots to solve the multiple encodings and this may lead to 
> > one root for each encoding. They have gone ahead to announce the issuing 
> > of flat top level domain names for their own encodings last week. They
> > are getting TWNIC to form another root for another encoding.
> > We were also told by CNNIC staff that they are issuing flat Chinese domain
> > names at top level for each registrant, in addition to hierarchical ones
> > although I may be mistaken (I copy this to Prof Qian of CNNIC for his
> > verification).
> 
>     You are right. This system is based on the English DNS. It is hierarchical
> just as the existing English DNS, but people can still register their names under
> the TLD (In this system, TLD is the same as root, one TLD for each language.

Many thanks for your explanations.
Can you explain further? TLD would be .zh for China, or is this one different?


> The TLDs are cooperative with each other) as in Germany.

As far as I know, Germany only has one TLD. Do you mean that there is
no second level domains such as in the UK or Japan, but companies,
organizations, academics,... all share the same second-level space?
That's the same also in Switzerland and in France, as far as I know.

> In this system, 
> every coutry can use their own encoding.

Do you mean that a TLD of .zh means that GB is used, and so on?
How would a resolver/client find out all this for all the TLDs?

> As you might know, in China, 
> asking people to use internal code other than GB is too difficult, if not impossible. 
> GB people refuse to use BIG5, and BIG5 people do not like to use GB. This is not
> simply because the political reason.

Of course not. The main reason is that they cover different sets of characters,
or the same characters but traditional/simplified with shapes that are
much too different to be easily recognizable (unless you learn them).
That's different for Unicode/ISO 10646/GB 13000 (all the same :-).
While for optimal presentation, the right font has to be available/selected
(not too difficult once the rest works), there is no danger that people
don't recognize the characters anymore, and both GB and Big5 are covered,
as well as a lot of other characters.

Of course, it may be some work for programmers in China to use Unicode
instead of GB when they do that for the first time, but they will be
able to use their knowledge more and more in the future. Or what do
you think? The end user, anyway, shouldn't be bothered by by encoding
issues.



Regards,   Martin.




#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, World Wide Web Consortium
#-#-#  mailto:duerst@w3.org   http://www.w3.org