Re: [idn] Proposal for creation of new gTLD for IDN

[James Seng <jseng@pobox.org.sg>]

Okay, let me be the devil advocate again, this time, trying to defend
the draft :) No, this does not mean I like the draft. Lets just say it
is for academic reasons...

Back on the basic of Jang's proposal. One of the merits Jang bring to
the table is that his encoding format are more compact. The reason it is
able to be smaller because it makes certain presumation on the domain
names, namely, you dont mix different language in a single label. It
furthers compact it by using a base36 rather than the commonly used
base32.

(CIDNUC/RACE compression also make the same presumation, compression
occurs only when the labels are from the same script 256 blocks so I
guess you can say CIDNUC also make this presumation indirectly).

Hence, Jang's requires an tag to identify the language/script use (just
like CIDNUC use the first 8bits specifying the 'block' or D7 otherwise).
His proposal is to use kr, jp etc as a tag per label.

John C Klensin wrote:
> I'm not sure I fully understand it, but this proposal seems to
> confuse "language/encoding used" with "country in which language
> is spoken".  By doing so, it causes:
> 
>         * problems for users of other (presumably still
>         non-ASCII) languages in that country,
>
>         * worse problems for countries with several
>         official/national languages,

Jang's email suggested having TLD kr.icom, jp.icom, cn.icom etc. This
add another presumation that the domain name itself is one
language/script (not just per label). Note that kr.icom, jp.icom does
not mean korea or japan or china, but Korean, Japanese and Chinese.

So, if we are willing to accept these presumation, then supposing to
register a Japanese name, you would then registered it under .jp.icom
irregardless where you are located. Similar for countries with several
offical languages (e.g. Singapore), different registration occurs under
different xx.icom.

>         * and still worse problems for countries whose companies
>         and organizations wish to participate in international
>         e-commerce or discourse and hence to exhibit multiple
>         languages to the rest of the world.

Yes. One of the problem is that you will not be able to mix Chinese,
Japanese, Korea, French, German etc in a single label or domain. On the
other hand, for sanity check, do you *really* want to have such a domain
name?

ps: Having said all these, let me say that I do not like a technical
solution which makes certain assumption on the domain names, especially
mixing language/script. My reason is that I am a Internet Engineer, not
a Social Engineer, so I am not in any position to say what is right or
wrong or how anyone should do their naming.

-James Seng

> Or am I missing something?
> 
>     john
> 
> --On Thursday, 06 July, 2000 17:46 +0900 Deuk-Kul Jang
> <dkjang@smind.co.kr> wrote:
> 
> > Hallelujah    Hallelujah    Hallelujah
> >
> >
> > This proposal is concerning an Internet Draft for an encoding
> > for IDN
> > (http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-dkjang-idn-00.txt),
> > that represent a method for internationalized domain name as
> > below.
> >
> > -------------------------------
> >      When a multilingual domain name is converted to the
> >      traditional one. 1. The 'multilingual key' is included
> >      automatically in converted names. 2. The 'language key'
> >      is included automatically in the converted names.
> >...