Re: [idn] normalisation, etc.

[Tan Tin Wee <tinwee@pobox.org.sg>]

RJ Atkinson wrote:
> At 22:31 22/06/00 , James Seng wrote:
> >While it is kind of out of topic, the question to ask is if the website
> >is *already* in Arabic or Chinese, why do they still need an English URL?
> 
>          There is no technical need for an ASCII URL.
> 
>          There might be business advantages to having a URL
> that can be expressed in ASCII because the majority
> of the current user base has a technical means to enter ASCII
> characters (in the form of a keyboard).

Typically, one would envisage that an e-commerce company
in China would wish to target both the English literate minority,
and the non-English literate majority in their business plan.
So in their advertisements on billboards or buses, I am sure
they will advertise both an ASCII URL and a Chinese URL, or
maybe in another native local script eg. Tibetan if that is the
target audience. However and whatever means you have, you can get to
that website in a mechanism most convenient to you, and most memorable
to you.

> >Or the person can *only* read/write Chinese, why should he learn English?
> 
>          No particularly good reason in this context.  The goal
> is that a user of any particular language can have domain names
> (including host names) expressed in the native form for that
> particular language.
> 
>          The answer that I have frequently heard from Chinese folks
> in China is that it is more profitable to be able to also speak English
> than not (for business/economic reasons).
> Ran
> rja@inet.org

I agree.
While it is truyly more profitable to speak English as an international
language,
remembering an ASCII string is as easy for the English-illiterate masses
is as easy as it is for me to remember URLs in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
...Which is why a number of e-com sites in China have resorted to naming their
websites with universally recognisable arabic numerals, which is close
to going back to IP addresses!

bestrgds

Tin Wee 'non-Egyptologist' Tan
--
Dr Tan Tin Wee
Interim CEO, MINC