Esszett, Final Sigma, ZWJ and ZWNJ

Tina Dam tina.dam at icann.org
Sat Feb 21 22:28:21 CET 2009


On February 21, 2009 1:02 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> My reading of the consensus is that the WG has discussed and generally
> accepted that Esszett, Final Sigma, ZWJ and ZWNJ can be made PVALID.

I completely agree.

> For registries that formerly mapped Esszett or Final Sigma, the
> solutions are:
> 
> 1. block registration of Esszett and Final Sigma at the registry level
> (in which case any former registration forms are still valid but will
> not be found by entering the newly PVALID characters)
> 
> 2. Bundle Esszett with "ss" and Final Sigma with lower case ("sigma")
> (and do so retrospectively for all prior registrations of the mapped
> forms).

I don't think bundling the two sigma's is a good solution. One is used in the middle of a word and the other at the end of a word. Not only are the two characters used differently they also look completely different. So while it's a registry decision on how to deal with this I don't think this group should make that bundling recommendation.

But it strikes me there is a different solution. Open up for allowing the new characters for registration in a sunrise fashion, where existing registrants (in whatever workaround solution was applied previously for accommodating strings that otherwise would have contain either Esszett, Final Sigma, or ZWJ or ZWNJ) to pre-register using these new chars in replacement or addition to their current domain name registration.

Tina


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