Re: [idn] punctuation

[Jaap Akkerhuis <jaap@NLnetLabs.nl>]

    But is this problem really limited to IDN? What about the following 
    legal ASCII DNS name:
    
    foo.com--secure-user-services-and-products.tech-mecca.biz

I don't know what the problem is with this one. It is a perfect
normal domain name. (*)

    Does this mean that we should try to switch left-to-right readers (most 
    of the world) over to big-endian domain names? Please tell me I'm 
    overreacting!
    
If I remember correctly, that is what the plan9 people did with
``text'' files (although there was not really a concept of file
types). The information in the file was considered to be in ``time
order'', and the time went from left to right. Time order as in,
if you read it out allowed, the first phrase you utter was the first
in time.  Whether it should be displayed right to left or in time
order is considered an display (application) problem. So ``cat''
would not bother with the write order and just dump the bytes, but
your display might parse the unicode (runes) and certainly ``troff''
should (**).

	jaap

(*) Although YMMV. In .nl, two consecutive hyphens have never been
allowed for registration by the registry.

(**) There was a version of troff around (done in Israel) which
actually did all four directions (left-right, right-left, printing
downwards and, I believe, for good measures also upwards)