Archaic scripts

Andrew Sullivan ajs at commandprompt.com
Thu May 8 22:40:09 CEST 2008


On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 08:59:42PM +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:

> Apostrophe is not permitted in domain names, and won't be under any 
> revisions we might make. Yet the number of people who might want to use an 
> apostrophe (for example, to have their surname as a domain) vastly 
> outweighs the number of people who want cuneiform. So, if "some people will 
> want it" is our only test, then apostrophe should be in.

This is a straw person argument.  Nobody ever saud that "some people
will [or even might] want it" is the only test.  We were trying to
internationalize LDH, I thought.  So anything that would qualify as
"is LDH-like in the other script" qualifies as as possible inclusion
_for the protocol_.  Then there is a list of exceptions that we have
for various historic or practical reasons.

Those who are arguing agains the inclusion of the historic scripts
are, I think, arguing that we should implicitly limit the temporal
scope of "internationalize LDH".  It is that scope limitation that I
dislike (although as I've already noted, if there is a tidy rule that
will clearly result in predictable choices, it's a little less
alarming to me).

> However, it's not our only test, and rightly so. Every character we add 
> (assuming some registry permits it; and if none ever would, why add it?) is 
> a small additional risk - both for issues we know about now, and ones that 
> might appear in the future. Just because each one individually is small 
> doesn't mean we should add thousands of them (which is where the logical 
> conclusion of your argument is).

This seems to presuppose that what we are doing is coming up with "a
list" of "allowed" things.  But we're not.  We're coming up with a set
of principles by which one internationalizes LDH.  To me, the fewer
exceptions to that set, the better.

Registry policy (and not just at the TLD level) is another matter
entirely.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at commandprompt.com
+1 503 667 4564 x104
http://www.commandprompt.com/


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