Re: [idn] Adding "optional" characters in draft-ietf-idn-nameprep

["A. Vine" <avine@eng.sun.com>]

Keith Moore wrote:
> 
> Paul Hoffman wrote:
> >
> > Disagree. No one has said anything about "language-specific" here. If
> > uses of the Hebrew *script* have optional characters, and if we
> > choose to have a list of optional characters, then the list is of
> > 10646 code points, regardless of the language that is using them.
> 
> the rules that we need are language-specific.  if it turns out that
> we can write script-specific rules that implement the language-specific
> rules without too much conflict between languages, that's a win.
> but frankly I'd be surprised if that turned out to be the case.
> 

If we use UTR #21 for case folding, we're already ignoring
language-specific rules.

I think we need to try and handle what makes the most sense to most
people.  If the allowed domain names have a few more restrictions than
regular names in the language, people will get used to it, as they have
done in the ASCII world.  Even for English, domain names are restrictive
(i.e. capitalization is significant in the language, but not in domain
names).  In order to make it logical for users to enter in a name and get
to that domain, there is going to be some limitation involved.

True, it may make more sense to ask Unicode to come up with a spec, since
the human language expertise is there.

Andrea
-- 
Andrea Vine, avine@eng.sun.com, iPlanet i18n architect
"In these Regulations any reference to a regulation is a 
reference to a regulation of these Regulations"
-- Education (UK Student Loans) Regulations 1997