Moving Right Along on the Inclusions Table...

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Thu Dec 21 20:42:41 CET 2006


I'm sending this to Daniel Yacob (Ethiopian IT Professionals 
Association), whose point of view I have tried to represent.

At 11:27 -0800 2006-12-21, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>  > >So I think it is functionally much closer to a SPACE than a
>>  >hyphen, and I don't see a compelling argument for making it
>>  >an exception for Ethiopic punctuation in the inclusion
>>  >list.
>>
>>  See above, you misunderstood me.
>
>No, I don't think I did at all.
>
>>
>>  >Unlike the geresh and gershayim for Hebrew, it isn't an essential
>>  >component needed to build words in recognizable forms.
>>
>>  They have something that naturally does the job
>
>And isn't needed to build words in recognizable forms.
>
>Internet identifiers don't *require* word separators, and
>if anything the predominant use of the existing "-" has
>been to cause trouble and spoofing, rather than to
>"do the job".
>
>>  >Now I know Daniel Yacob has asked that Ethiopian ":" be
>>  >treated as a connector for identifiers, as it would be
>>  >a more naturally readable way for Ethiopians to string
>>  >together words for multiword identifiers, a la
>>  >the underscore in C: multiple_word_identifier_example.
>>
>>  If you think the underscore is a natural thing.
>
>Utterly beside the point. There is nothing "natural" about
>it -- it is an artificial convention used by formal
>programming languages to define identifiers, in contexts
>where SPACE is a formal delimiter in the syntax.
>
>>  The point is that the
>>  ETHIOPIC WORDSPACE (which is not the COLON character) is already
>>  there in Ethiopic script. Why ask them to use "-" or indeed "_"? They
>>  have something already that does the job.
>
>Now it you who misunderstand.
>
>>
>>  >But I think *that* discussion belongs in the realm of specialized
>>  >syntax extensions for programming languages, much the way
>>  >"_" is handled, for example.
>>
>>  This is wayyyyy out in left field, and has nothing to do with
>>  ETHIOPIC WORDSPACE.
>
>Not at all out in left field. It is precisely and appropriately
>focussed on the area where it could make a difference. In
>Perl or some other programming language context, if "_" doesn't
>seem appropriate for stringing together long Ethiopic multiword
>identifiers, an addition to the syntax which treats Ethiopic
>":" as a parallel connector could work fine.
>
>It isn't needed for *internet identifiers*, however.
>
>>  >I think the argument is identical for Ethiopic ":", and stronger, if
>>  >anything, because that particular bit of punctuation is confusable
>>  >with an important syntax element in URLs.
>>
>>  I can't see how this could cause any actual difficulty. The colon
>>  syntax element occurs in only one position, as in http:// or ftp://
>>  and if someone accidentally put an ETHIOPIC WORDSPACE in there the
>>  only thing that would happen is that the browser wouldn't go anywhere.
>
>You are wrong about this. See, for example:
>
>http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_16715
>
>which points out user confusions that result from the fact
>that the Mac OS X uses ":" as the directory separator.
>
>Allowing a ":" lookalike into the inclusion set for StringPrep
>(which would not *only* be used for NamePrep and domain names,
>by the way), is just asking for bad guys to come looking for
>ways to exploit its visual similarity to ":", especially since
>both usages would be related to syntactic separation, and
>users would not have any clear way to distinguish the subtleties
>here.
>
>>  >"-" is the only exceptional bit of punctuation that gets carried
>>  >forward, I think, and it has to be simply because of prior use in
>>  >ASCII-based domain names.
>>
>>  And the question of whether it is right to force that on Ethiopic
>>  which has its own delimiter is one which I think it is legitimate to
>>  ask.
>
>And is it right to force confusion on IDNA for a common
>syntax element to allow emulation of a word separation
>convention in Ethiopic which is being dropped even in
>languages using the Ethiopic script?
>
>--Ken


-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com


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