Mapping?

[Erik van der Poel]

Lisa, these are very good questions. My responses below.

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 7:06 AM, Lisa Dusseault <lisa.dusseault at gmail.com> wrote:
> One slightly more solid question for browsers is, would it be entirely
> crazy to have different mapping algorithms for typed-in domain names
> than for links followed?  There might be a locale-dependent mapping as
> well as a global mapping.  (I assume that having every established
> locale mapping installed would be complete craziness.)

It would be crazy to blindly apply locale-dependent mappings to text
entered in the URL field. What if the user copied-and-pasted a link
that was typed by a different user? The implementation can tell the
difference between single keystrokes (like a capital I typed by a
Turkish user) and a paste (like the Control-V). But how many
implementers will bother with that? And the only example given so far
is the Turkish i and its variants. (And maybe Azeri.)

> Another question is: when posted links are followed, how often do we
> know the locale where the link was authored?  Not that the browser
> following the link would necessarily be able to apply the mappings of
> the locale in which it was authored, but would it be slightly better
> to apply a global mapping than a mapping from a different locale?

A browser cannot tell where the page was authored. It would be much
better to apply a global mapping.

Erik