Unicode versions (Re: Criteria for exceptional characters)

[Gervase Markham]

Mark Davis wrote:
> There is also a big difference between the flexibility in the protocol 
> vs that available to registries and user-agents. Suppose that in the 
> protocol we allow Hebrew, but recommend against (for some reason) final 
> forms of letters. Registries and user-agents can then start by following 
> those recommendations, but if it turns out to be necessary to allow them 
> in (either fully or in limited circumstances), it is relatively easy for 
> them to do so. Baking a prohibition against final-forms of letters into 
> the protocol is a much different matter -- it takes quite a while for 
> everyone to update to a new version. (And during that time, I have no 
> doubt that we will hear charges of discrimination...)

Maybe that affects the deliverables?

A good set of deliverables might be:

a) An update to the IDN protocol restricting the permitted character 
repertoire to a certain set
b) A set of recommendations about policy best practice.

So a) might allow both forms of Hebrew letters, but the recommendations 
in b) might say:

"We've permitted both forms of Hebrew letters, but recommend that each 
registry only permit one or other in their namespace."

Perhaps that might be overly confusing, if .il picks one set and .net 
picks the other, I don't know. But if we can't make a decision about 
which one is right, then surely the key point is that whichever one you 
pick, _only_ _pick_ _one_...

Gerv

(Note: I know little about Hebrew orthography, so apologies if this 
isn't a good example. But hopefully you can see my point.)