Revised Consensus Summary on Sharp-S and Final Sigma

[Shawn Steele]

A couple things concern me about the results here.

One is that, of course, "france at large" supports PVALID as it is closer to their case of separating Ecole and ecole.  To me, this is noise.

The other votes I could almost group into 3 buckets:

* Those that think names need to be distinct and don't like mapping, or bundling, either.
* Those that think there's a linguistic difference and support is necessary, yet like mapping.  This includes people who would bundle, so it's not clear to me if PVALID is voted to support the character, or because differentiation is necessary.  Bundling seems to be at odds with the need for differentiation.
* Those who think the proper presentation is needed, yet think that some sort of enforced bundling, or mapping, is not harmful, and is important for compatibility.

These groups seem to also have different perspectives, and areas of expertise (all valid), so it concerns me that strictly counting numbers might ignore one perspective or area of expertise.

Despite that concern, I would rather make forward progress, and, as I've said before, I don't think that "both" and "neither" are actually different in practice.  Zones that care will bundle, hence both will become neither, and zones that don't care won't bundle.  The only long term differences are that "both" makes presentation slightly easier, and "neither" would ease the transition and be more consistent across zones.  "both with mapping" is not on the list, but may be slightly easier than "neither" for presentation and could also provide consistency and ease the transition.  Long term the impact is merely which quirk(s) are being worked around, the net impact is low.  Code is required to provide "both" with bundling, it is also required for "neither" with presentation.

-Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: idna-update-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:idna-update-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Vint Cerf
Sent: ???????, ???????? 09, ??? 2009 7:25
To: idna-update at alvestrand.no
Subject: Revised Consensus Summary on Sharp-S and Final Sigma

feedback from the WG members led to revision of the summary spreadsheet attached.

vint