Archaic scripts (was: Re: New version: draft-ietf-idna-tables-01.txt)

John C Klensin klensin at jck.com
Wed May 7 13:58:30 CEST 2008


(sorry, should have changed the subject line earlier)

--On Tuesday, 06 May, 2008 21:08 -0700 Paul Hoffman
<phoffman at imc.org> wrote:

> At 10:37 PM -0400 5/6/08, Vint Cerf wrote:
>> Can we also hear from others on this please?
> 
> Historic scripts are like symbols. I agree with the current
> position of banning the symbol blocks because they won't be
> used. I think we can make the same determination for historic
> scripts. If we leave them in, it's no big deal.

Symbols are not used to write the words of languages, living or
dead.  
Symbols are not classified as "letters" by anyone I know of and,
in particular, do not have Unicode General Categories "L*".

You may or may not find those distinctions between symbols and
letters in historical scripts persuasive relative to what should
be permitted by the protocol, but I believe it is clear that
they are not the same thing and hence that analogies do not
automatically apply.

  john




More information about the Idna-update mailing list