Heart-shaped digits

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

John,

The string in the .ir registry is composed only of characters from the 
ASB. I used the translated string since few here, self included, could 
be usefully left alone with a Farsi language string in Arabic Script 
[1], and I'd bet a lot more than a couple of C notes that very, very few 
would even recognize that there was a digit in the string, let alone see 
it as a visual pun.

I suspect that, at least for the bit Harald's drawn attention to, that 
"what we are disagreeing about here" is nothing.

Eric

[1] The International Dunhuang Project has a nice example of a Farsi 
language commercial text written in Hebrew Script. Quite an eye opener.

John C Klensin wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I'm getting confused about what we are disagreeing about here,
> if anything.   Extended Arabic-Indic digit five isn't a symbol,
> it is a perfectly good numeral.   The only possible restriction
> on the use of that character in an otherwise-Latin string would
> be a registry "mixed script" or "character list" rule, and those
> are not our problem.
>
> What a character "looks like", either with regard to other
> characters or to what the user is somehow expecting to see is
> very subjective and likely to differ from one user to the next
> as well as interacting with the issues raised by artistic fonts.
> The subjectivity of those visual confusion issues are a large
> fraction of the reason we've agreed, several times, to not
> address confuseability or phishing as part of the protocol
> efforts.
>
> If the .IR registry wants to permit mixing an Extended
> Arabic-Indic numeral with Latin alphabetic and hyphen characters
> in this way, no one is going to try to prevent it (and I can
> find nothing in the protocol (or Bidi) that does so).  Some
> would consider it unwise, others might applaud its cleverness,
> but the decision is up to the registry.
>
> So what is the disagreement?
>
>       john
>
>
> --On Thursday, 04 December, 2008 00:10 +0330 Alireza Saleh
> <saleh at nic.ir> wrote:
>
>   
>> Harald Alvestrand wrote:
>>     
>>>> Which brings me to true love, or the similarity of the
>>>> "eastern  arabic-indic" character for the digit "5" and the
>>>> apparently human glyph  for "heart", and also "emoji"
>>>> enjoyed by CJK script users, and  conceivably by Cree
>>>> Syllabics and other script users. I suppose an  emoticon is
>>>> appropriate here, so ";-)".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> There is, in the .ir namespace, a label which contains 
>>>> "from-my-heart-to-your-heart", with each "eastern
>>>> arabic-indic" digit  "5" rendered (correctly) as a heart.
>>>>
>>>>   
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> Since the IDNA2008 effort long ago decided to ban symbols,
>>> including the  11 "heart" symbols in Unicode (all of which
>>> are class "So"), fairness  would dictate that we give no
>>> special consideration to use of numbers as  symbols outside
>>> their linguistic context.
>>>
>>>                     Harald
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Idna-update mailing list
>>> Idna-update at alvestrand.no
>>> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/idna-update
>>>   
>>>       
>> I think that symbols and numbers are not entirely comparable;
>> you don't completely ban numerals in the protocol. Nor can
>> you ban their ASCII use in non-numerical context. How could
>> you ban <domains4you.com>? So the question is what
>> overwhelming technical requirement leads you to set a
>> double-standard for ASCII and IDN? You just need a better
>> argument than saying that numbers should be confined to 'their
>> linguistic context' or 'Visual confusions'.
>>
>>
>> Alireza
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Idna-update mailing list
>> Idna-update at alvestrand.no
>> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/idna-update
>>     
>
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