Archaic scripts

Erik van der Poel erikv at google.com
Mon May 12 18:56:54 CEST 2008


On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 3:48 PM, LB <lbleriot at gmail.com> wrote:
> Erik,
>  I am sorry my English. The remarks are not "arrogant" (except maybe
>  mine). "Global Arrogance" is a reproach of many countries against the
>  say that global solutions decided upon by global experts and interests
>  know better what they want than themselves.
>  Apology if I hurt you.

Louis,

I accept your apology. Now I have to apologize in advance if I
misunderstand what you wrote above, but it sounds like you are saying
that it is difficult for individuals or small organizations to be
heard, if the larger organizations are so focussed on themselves. I'm
not really sure how to alleviate that problem, but it's great that
this mailing list is open, so that everyone may be more aware of all
the different points of view.

>  The question remains. You say you're looking for interoperability.
>  With whom. With the World normalcy (ie normative documents or policies
>  global agreements) or with other local or private standards?

Generally, I am interested in interoperability between pieces of
software that are distributed in a network. (I am also interested in
human-to-human communication.) Software does not interoperate with
documents, policies and agreements. A piece of software interoperates
with a different piece of software, or, equally importantly, an older
version of itself. It's hard to write correct and efficient software.
If the documents are very complicated or do not have any basis in
implementable/implemented software, implementors will ignore those
documents in the interests of shipping their product sooner.

An early member of the IETF community once said:

"We reject: kings, presidents and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and running code."

This is from Dave Clark, 24th IETF, 1992, slide 19, page 543 of:

http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/prior29/IETF24.pdf

I am sure Paul will let us know whether the IETF has strayed from this
principle.

Erik

>  Best regards
>  Louis Blériot
>
>  2008/5/9 Erik van der Poel <erikv at google.com>:
>
>
> > We are only trying to maintain or achieve interoperability. If we
>  > cannot get the representatives of the bigger players to agree, then
>  > it's hard to achieve interoperability, right? Sorry if some of my
>  > wording is deemed arrogant -- I'm just an engineer with ideas for
>  > interoperability.
>  >
>  > Erik
>  >
>  > On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 4:23 AM, LB <lbleriot at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >> do I risk a question? Who decides? It is the IETF or are the
>  >> manufacturers? I do not understand qu'IE7 fails to comply with the
>  >> RFCs. It seems that Firefox also has its own policy. This resembles
>  >> the Minitel during 1980. To know the protocol you must disassemble the
>  >> code. Why would I not have the right to use domain names encrypted in
>  >> cuneiform? Why would I not have the right to create my own writing? I
>  >> do not want to be offensive, but as a non-Anglo-Saxon and non-engineer
>  >> I begin to resent what some call the "Global Arrogance": is this
>  >> really what you want? Why not proceed methodically and normally. That
>  >> is to say: define the service to be provided, specifications, levels
>  >> of operating conditions (ROM, browsers, applications), obligations of
>  >> interoperability, long terms development prospects, work on modeling
>  >> (object system , exotèem). What you define is an artifact to be
>  >> central to life in the world with a life span of several centuries.
>  >> This is not a negotiation between Google, Micorosoft and Firefox.
>  >>
>  >> I am puzzled.
>  >> --
>  >> LB
>  >>
>  >> 2008/5/9 Shawn Steele <Shawn.Steele at microsoft.com>:
>  >>> Agreed pretty much.  Sorry I haven't followed the recommendations for the
>  >>> casing, etc. rules, however disambiguating the  mapping and
>  >>> Unicode<->Punycode rules from the disallowed set would "solve" (some of) the
>  >>> problems that cause IE7 to not look up unassigned characters.
>  >>> -          Shawn
>  >> _______________________________________________
>  >> Idna-update mailing list
>  >> Idna-update at alvestrand.no
>  >> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/idna-update
>  >>
>  >
>


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