Tamil Numerals in IDNA - Re: WG Last Call for Four Primary IDNABIS I-Ds

[Paul Hoffman]

At 7:22 AM -0400 8/21/09, John C Klensin wrote:
> > Is it a "block" defined in Unicode? I don't see it, but I
>> could be missing something.
>
>No, it is not.  I was using "block" more informally.  The point
>I was trying to make is that I see a considerable difference
>between, e.g.,
>
>	"exclude Tamil numerals"
>	
>	and
>	
>	"this character looks like that character, so exclude
>	one of them".
>
>The latter is clearly part of a case-by-case character analysis.
>The former, whatever it might be, is a decision about a class of
>characters, whether Unicode's selection of properties identifies
>it as a class or not.

Agree and disagree. I agree that the latter is case-by-case, but I am not convinced that "Foo numerals where Foo is a small subset of all languages/scripts" is not case-by-case.

>Again, I haven't formed a personal opinion about this request.
>I'm just trying to keep the consideration process from getting
>muddied by what I believe to be an incorrect claim about the
>nature of what is being proposed.  

This is a worthy goal, definitely.

>FWIW, while I understand that circumstances probably could not
>have permitted this input to come earlier, I'm very anxious
>about making character-exclusion or character-inclusion changes
>at this very late date. 

Fully agree, particularly if the rule being requested makes a lot of sense as a suggestion to registries.