Final Sigma (was: RE: Esszett, Final Sigma, ZWJ and ZWNJ)

[Tina Dam]

Vaggelis,
I totally understand the frustration and concern that you are expressing. I am wondering though if it is not better to get this corrected now, so that the Greek script/language is functioning correctly in the Internet/with domain names, than it is to have this half solution that really makes things worse the larger the volume of domain names that are registered? That is both under .GR, but also other TLDs that might introduce the Greek characters (.CY is the most natural existing TLD that comes to mind in addition to .GR, but off course also gTLDs, and even more importantly as we move to the IDN TLDs).

As far as I see things this is not a matter of mapping or no mappings, but in the case about the final sigma it is the matter of a wrong decision being made in 2003, making

U+03A3 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA - always map into:

U+03C3 GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA - when in fact (as you and your colleagues are well aware of and as you express below) it often should be mapped into:

U+03C2 GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA

In other words, the mapping of the Capital Sigma is not a one-to-one nor a global solution like for example the mapping of Capital "A" to lower-case "a" is, and hence this sigma-mapping should never have been introduced in the protocol in the first place.

About solutions....I am wondering if you are going to be at the Mexico meeting this following week and if so, perhaps we can find a good time to chat further about it? (That would be with my IDN hat on and ICANN hat of, since ICANN off course has nothing to do with your policies).

Tina



From: idna-update-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:idna-update-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Vaggelis Segredakis
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 2:41 AM
To: idna-update at alvestrand.no; 'Vint Cerf'
Cc: 'Euripides Zervanos'; 'Panagiotis Papaspiliopoulos'; 'Sotiris Panaretou'
Subject: Re: Esszett, Final Sigma, ZWJ and ZWNJ

Dear Vint,

I would love to say that we as the .gr Registry are enthusiastic about the proposed solution (PVALID Final Sigma) but in reality we are quite skeptical. I can clearly see the advantages of the use of a distinct final sigma. The reality however is that the change is significant and the registry will have to take measures to reduce the impact.

It will be necessary for us (and I believe anyone who uses Esszett as well) to "map" the two versions of the domain names ourselves to overcome the fact that browsers and software do not change overnight and IDNA2003 and IDNA2008 are incompatible.

In Greek, a word that finishes with a final sigma in small characters when typed in capital letters gets a normal capital sigma in the place of that final sigma. Although you have prohibited Capital letters in IDNA2008 any browser programmer will try to translate letter by letter a URL typed in capital. Most possibly then he will translate a capital Sigma to sigma and not final sigma, regardless of its position in the word. Why would a programmer try to learn Greek grammar?

For each final sigma in a domain name, the registrant will have to register a variant with a lower sigma in that position as well and each variant that occurs if you put more than one final sigma in a domain name. For 2 final sigmas you will have 4 variants. If you add to this the tonos punctuation point issue (in capital letters it is not used and this gives us two variants for each domain name), you end up with sixteen variants for a single domain name with two final sigmas (two words)!

We already do bundling of the domain names. We will probably do it in the future, especially if this proposed solution moves forward. If you have any other alternatives though that could shed some new light on these issues, this might be a good time to start discussing them. Even if this means a best practice document or IDNAv2_2009, anything should be open to discussion.

Best Regards,

Vaggelis Segredakis
Administrator of the .GR Top Level Domain
Institute of Computer Science
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas
Tel. +30-281-0391450
Fax +30-281-0391451
Email segred at ics.forth.gr





Message: 3
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:14:04 -0500
From: Vint Cerf <vint at google.com>
Subject: Re: Esszett, Final Sigma, ZWJ and ZWNJ
To: Mark Davis <mark at macchiato.com>
Cc: Paul Hoffman <phoffman at imc.org>, Andrew Sullivan
            <ajs at shinkuro.com>,    idna-update at alvestrand.no, John C Klensin
            <klensin at jck.com>
Message-ID: <2C4BC1C5-3B45-46FA-AA6D-9A60D3C72B35 at google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Mark,

thanks - I think what left me in an ambiguous state was the term "bits on the wire".  In your example, under the IDNA2003 mapping process, the final sigma is mapped into ordinary sigma and THEN the resulting string is looked up (after conversion to xn-- format using the punycode algorithm). The two forms become identical prior to lookup.
Under the proposed IDNA2008 rules, the two strings remain distinct in both the U-label and A-label format and thus look "different" on the wire and unless other measures are taken (bundling, restricted registration, etc) it is possible for the two domains to yield distinct results on lookup.

Paul - is that the picture you wanted to paint?

sorry to be slow to see which bits you were comparing.

v


Vint Cerf
Google
1818 Library Street, Suite 400
Reston, VA 20190
202-370-5637
vint at google.com

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