Archaic scripts (was: Re: New version: draft-ietf-idna-tables-01.txt)

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Wed, May 07, 2008 at 05:37:40PM -0700, Kenneth Whistler wrote:

> Sumero-Akkadian is extinct. And it does *not* belong
> in IDNs.

This gets to the nut of the debate, I think.  What I've been trying to
ask is _why not_?  We have an algorithm for generating the rules for
what gets in.  These code points do not automatically get picked up as
DISALLOWED by that algorithm.  So what is the reason for creating this
extra list of exceptions?

Further, I am sure that operators of large zones do not want to go
through this protocol rewriting exercise again.  If there is some
automatic way to classify future additions to Unicode as belonging to
this category of exception (and so far, I don't think I've seen one
proposed, but I might have misunderstood the discussion around the
planes), then I can see a convenient way to exclude everything in that
category.  Otherwise, it seems to me we'll lose the Unicode version
agnosticism that was supposed to be one of the benefits of this work

I do think that many zone operators ought to be advised not to allow
these code points anyway.  But that's a completely different matter
from deciding at the protocol level that they're not allowed.  Also,
it follows from the general principle, "Don't publish what you don't
understand."

A

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