IDNA2008: concerns about inconsistent mappings, and german sharp s

Harald Alvestrand harald at alvestrand.no
Thu Dec 11 14:51:51 CET 2008


Markus Scherer wrote:
> Dear Alireza,
>
> Thanks for your reply.
>
> As far as I understand, ZWJ/ZWNJ and ß are similar in that they are 
> treated differently in IDNA 2003 vs. 2008, and present similar 
> problems (new distinctions of domain names or failure to connect).
>
> From the user's perspective, these cases are a bit different though: 
> As you point out, the joiners are necessary for proper spelling of 
> some words and names in a number of languages, and it is possible to 
> write regular expressions to reasonably approximate the contexts where 
> that's the case. In contrast, the "sharp s" is really just a ligature 
> of two differently-shaped 's' letters. In all but government usage 
> (registration of names of persons), the difference between sharp s and 
> ss can be ignored, and often is. There is no way to create a 
> contextual rule for when to allow a sharp s. At best, one could use a 
> dictionary, but that does not scale and would only upset users who 
> don't know or disagree with the standard spelling.
Markus,
this has been discussed extensively (some would say exhaustingly) on the 
mailing list before.

The conclusion seems to be that eszett and ss ARE equivalent in 
Switzerland and Austria, but are NOT equivalent in Germany.

Please review the actual text in the documents, and feel free to peruse 
the archives at http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/idna-update for the 
rather large volume of email that has passed on this subject.

I'll let our DENIC friends take it from there, I think.

                           Harald




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