Unicode versions (Re: Criteria for exceptional characters)

[Erik van der Poel]

Sorry, when I said "warn about U+1431", I meant in our specs or
guidelines, not in the UI. If implementors heed our recommendations
regarding script-mixing as Mark suggested, then much of the problem
with this script is gone. URLs containing these characters may be
quite interesting. Some of them have double-dots and straight
diagonals. When you write a URL with these characters, you are almost
mixing scripts, it seems. I.e. you are mixing ASCII punctuation with
Canadian syllabics. Perhaps those users will get used to that.

Erik

On 12/18/06, Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com> wrote:
> At 09:45 -0800 2006-12-18, Erik van der Poel wrote:
> >Perhaps it is not necessary to remove the entire script. It may be
> >sufficient to warn about U+1431, which may look like a slash followed
> >by a backslash in some fonts and/or at small sizes. It may also be a
> >good idea to warn that some of the characters in that script might be
> >used to confuse novice users, who may not be very familiar with the
> >precise set of characters used to delimit portions of a URL. Some of
> >this computer stuff is rather confusing to beginners.
>
> Sort of dumbing-down every browser to mono-lingual English speakers?
> Is that what you mean? (Really, I'm not trying to be offensive here,
> I'm genuinely mystified.) Most users of Syllabics do not use
> localized software; they use software in English or French. Will
> their software warn them about EVERY genuine URL they wish to visit?
>
> Let us not be scriptist. :-)
>
> Eudora does something weird. Mark Davis sent out his example with
> thorn.is the other day. Eudora on mouse-over warns "this URL contains
> encoded characters, possibly to disguise its true name". Encoded
> characters. Wow. OK, so the warning is badly written....
>
> Anyway, every user is going to be unfamiliar with some script.
> --
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com
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