recommending URIs, A-labels and LDH-labels in HTML

Stephane Bortzmeyer bortzmeyer at nic.fr
Fri Feb 1 14:32:11 CET 2008


On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 12:12:12AM -0500,
 John C Klensin <klensin at jck.com> wrote 
 a message of 31 lines which said:

> We have the potential for name confusion and phishing problems with
> ASCII addresses; IDNs don't invent that problem but will make it
> much worse.  We have the problem of appropriate registration
> restrictions based on trademarks, place names, etc.; IDNs make that
> much worse and more complicated.  We have difficulties with
> information in registration databases; IDN registrations may
> increase the odds of information that is unusable.

OK, the world is complicated. You find it too complicated
(http://www.thbz.org/e2/difficult_languages.php). So what? What can we
do?

1) Using top-down methods, try very hard to suppress every language
but English and every script but Latin-ASCII. (For centuries, the
French governement implemented a similar policy with regional
languages in France with, unfortunately, some success.)

2) Accept the world as it is, stop telling users that they should
change the rules they know to please the computer experts and deploy
solutions and stop complaining they are complicated.

2) is IMHO more constructive.





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