Allowed characters (was: Re: Casefolding Sigma (was: Re: IDNAbis Preprocessing Draft)

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Sun Mar 30 22:21:20 CEST 2008


At 13:06 -0700 2008-03-30, Paul Hoffman wrote:
>Off-list, but keeping Patrik on the Cc:

No. No, and no. I am not going to respect this off-list. I *am not* a 
member of the UTC. I am Irish National Body representative to ISO/IEC 
JTC1/SC2/WG2, and I *work* with my colleagues in the UTC. Sometimes 
we work together. Sometimes we work with opposing viewpoints. But we 
work openly. I am a guest here on idna-update at alvestrand.no and I do 
my best to contribute positively. Your answering me privately (and in 
the way you did so) I consider an affront to my Unicode colleagues, 
and I believe they have the right to know what you have said. So, in 
good faith and to honour our collective endeavour, I am bouncing this 
back to the list.

>At 11:27 PM +0400 3/30/08, Michael Everson wrote:
>>>I haven't followed the beta process for 5.1 very carefully,
>>
>>You ought to. It is in YOUR interests and in the interests of YOUR 
>>constituents to do so.
>
>Why?

Evidently because you are responsible to your constituents?

>We know that IDNA200x will come out after 5.1, and maybe even 5.2 or 
>6.0 or whatever.

And 6.3 and 7.2 and 9.0. And you should give a damn. If you can't see 
why, you should wonder why you are in this business. The Universal 
Character Set will, should we all not drown in global deluge or fail 
to the next pandemic, record the entire history of our species. Pay 
attention. This activity is worthwhile, and worth doing properly.

>One of the major goals of IDNA200x is to be version-independent. We 
>don't want to know how you make your sausages, or even how fast you 
>make them.
>
>>  And I say this as Irish NB representative to WG2, who am often at 
>>loggerheads with the UTC.
>
>I noticed. :-)

And even when I am, I respect them, and I accord them respect.

>>So my opinion is not a Unicode opinion. (Though I suspect they hold 
>>the same view. You OUGHT to follow these processes carefully.)
>
>If we are successful, I think we shouldn't have to.

May I suggest that you take your head out of the sand? You are part 
of a community. That community is wider, and MUCH MUCH MORE IMPORTANT 
than IETF and its bizarre and dysfunctional procedures and its 
I-don't-have-to-care-about-the-world-outside-my-parents'-basement 
self-importance.

>My "why?" above is a serious question. What can TUC do that would 
>cause us to need to track their versions?

People are people. People err. Your belief that you can do this work 
without care to its content is an example of such fallibility.

Off the high horse. Out of the white castle. People who work in WG2 
and people who work in the UTC are your colleagues, and you owe them 
more respect than you have shown today.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com


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