What rules have been used for the current list of codepoints?

[Harald Alvestrand]

--On 14. desember 2006 10:35 +0000 Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com> 
wrote:

> At 05:18 -0500 2006-12-14, Vint Cerf wrote:
>> I have been following along, perhaps with less understanding than many,
>> but I continue to have concerns that we are not always distinguishing
>> that which is needed for expressive natural language, and that which is
>> safe, stable, and secure for Internet domain names.
>
> Hm. Vint, you've mentioned "expressive natural language" before, so let's
> discuss it. For my part, I assume that the letters used, for instance, to
> write a person's name should be included in the permitted list of
> letters.

Not if the name is O'Shea, or even "Vint Cerf". Both ASCII single quote and 
ASCII space are out of bounds for IDNA.

(repeat comment about distinguishing between stringprep and nameprep here)

> I would not insist on smart quotes, for instance, as they are
> decorative. (They are essential in typesetting, of course.)
>
> There are a few script-specific non-letter characters that need
> inclusion. The Geresh is needed to indicate certain types of abbreviation
> in the Hebrew language, and is also used to mark certain consonants in
> Ladino. It's not really "optional" therefore. The Ethiopic wordspace is
> used by them in the same way we use a hyphen to separate words with a
> visible mark (as in vint-cerf.com). They do not use the hyphen and it is
> an alien thing to impose on them. On the other hand, it can ONLY occur
> between two Ethiopic letters, so it should not be problematic.
>
> Does this help?
> --
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com
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