Mixing scripts

[John C Klensin]

--On Thursday, December 28, 2006 10:25 AM +0100 Kent Karlsson 
<kent.karlsson14 at comhem.se> wrote:

> It's good to see that (at last) there is support for IDNs.
> However, I don't find it a good idea to have that IE allows it
> in one way, Firefox
> in another, etc. The rules for what is allowed in IDNs and what
> is not should be common for all (browsers, email clients,
> etc.). It is clear, I hope, that the current rules-for-all
> w.r.t. IDNs (laid down in the IDNA related RFCs) are currently
> not sufficiently restrictive.

While I agree that this would be desirable in principle, in 
practice it just won't happen.   First, note that browsers 
already differ on what to do about abbreviated URLs and have for 
years.  Some add TLDs, some initiate a searching procedure, some 
try something and then branch to the search engine of their 
choices... and some even give the user control over these 
options.  In addition, different browsers localize to non-ASCII 
environments in different ways, some more radically than others, 
so interpretation of slightly-strange names may differ from 
locality to locality, even for what is nominally the same 
version of the same browser.  Those differences in behavior 
occur today even in the absence of IDNs: the batter for uniform 
UI behavior is long since lost.

In addition, it is not clear to me that complete uniformity is 
desirable, especially when one moves to environments that are 
very different from Western European languages, with RtoL ones 
standing out as particular examples.

    john