I agree.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 12/20/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Kenneth Whistler</b> <<a href="mailto:kenw@sybase.com">kenw@sybase.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>> Ethiopic word space, please. It is used as we use hyphens, and the<br>> use of hyphen for that purpose is unknown to them.<br><br>I disagree on that one. It is basically a word separator,<br>derived from the even earlier inscription rule "|" separator,
<br>and isn't a hyphen.<br><br>And it is largely being replaced in modern Ethiopian printed<br>materials simply with a SPACE. There are Ethiopian input<br>methods that let users cycle between a regular Latin-font-based
<br>SPACE, a double-wide Ethiopic font space, and the U+1361 ETHIOPIC<br>WORDSPACE characters (which for those on this list not familiar<br>with Ethiopic, looks like a square-dotted ":").<br><br>See, e.g.:<br><br>
<a href="http://www.abyssiniacybergateway.net/mule/punct.html">http://www.abyssiniacybergateway.net/mule/punct.html</a><br><br><a href="http://www.ethiopians.com/daniel.html">http://www.ethiopians.com/daniel.html</a><br><br>
So I think it is functionally much closer to a SPACE than a<br>hyphen, and I don't see a compelling argument for making it<br>an exception for Ethiopic punctuation in the inclusion<br>list. Unlike the geresh and gershayim for Hebrew, it isn't
<br>an essential component needed to build words in recognizable<br>forms.<br><br>Now I know Daniel Yacob has asked that Ethiopian ":" be<br>treated as a connector for identifiers, as it would be<br>a more naturally readable way for Ethiopians to string
<br>together words for multiword identifiers, a la<br>the underscore in C: multiple_word_identifier_example.<br><br>But I think *that* discussion belongs in the realm of specialized<br>syntax extensions for programming languages, much the way
<br>"_" is handled, for example. The fact that the underscore<br>"_" is commonly used in programming language identifiers<br>to string together words into single identifiers,<br>particularly for (formal) languages which don't distinguish
<br>case (and hence make InterCaps impractical), doesn't<br>automatically mean that "_" gets carried forward into<br>constructing internet identifiers for Latin (or other<br>scripts). I think the argument is identical for Ethiopic ":",
<br>and stronger, if anything, because that particular bit of<br>punctuation is confusable with an important syntax element<br>in URLs.<br><br>"-" is the only exceptional bit of punctuation that gets<br>carried forward, I think, and it has to be simply because
<br>of prior use in ASCII-based domain names.<br><br>--Ken<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Idna-update mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Idna-update@alvestrand.no">Idna-update@alvestrand.no</a><br>
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