Leaving out scripts (Re: Unicode versions (Re: Criteria for exceptional characters))

Gervase Markham gerv at mozilla.org
Thu Dec 21 11:34:51 CET 2006


Mark Davis wrote:
> I am not yet, however, so sure that it should be baked into the 
> protocol. This is a pretty big hammer, and it may be better to leave it 
> to the registrars and/or the user-agents, which have a lot more 
> flexibility. It is very simple for a user-agent to have a mixed-script 
> test, and then loosen it for particular languages where the spoofing 
> opportunities don't arise (eg mixing Latin and Devanagari).

There's one big difference between implementing the mix test in browsers 
and implementing it at the registry level. If you implement it in 
browsers, then decide that a loosening is necessary in a particular 
case, you need to update 1 billion+ installed bits of software before 
you can sell the new IDNs. That would probably take, based on past 
experience, about four or five years.

If you implement it at a registry policy level, you can start immediately.

Gerv


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