Unicode 7.0.0, (combining) Hamza Above, and normalization

[Asmus Freytag]

On 8/8/2014 9:01 AM, John Levine wrote:
>> I think this is an important insight and it may indeed be the case that
>> normalization for Domain Name purposes and normalization for other purposes
>> are not as aligned as we supposed. ...
> If I may stick my semi-informed oar in, it seems to me that for
> linguistic purposes, homographs are generally not an issue.  Remember
> all those manual typewriters that didn't have digit 1 or 0 keys, so
> you used letters l and O instead.
>
> In our case, homographs are a big deal.  So can we just say that,
> and decide to do whatever minimizes homograph issues even though
> it's not the same as what would reflect linguistic usage?
>

I think we all get that homographs are an issue for identifiers. Yet 
homographs
(and near homographs) exist for a variety of reasons -- and they are not 
isolated
instances.

The discussion should be about where and how these are best addressed.

Baking exceptional treatment for isolated cases into the IDNA protocol 
strikes
me as possibly the worst solution.