Touchstones for "Mapping"

Harald Alvestrand harald at alvestrand.no
Thu Apr 2 09:56:02 CEST 2009


Martin J. Dürst wrote:
> I very much agree with Harald. We are working on IDNs because we want 
> humans to be able to easily read domain names in their script. Storing
> them as A-Labels when there is a reasonable chance that humans will
> have a look at them (e.g. in HTML or XML source, email source,...)
> is against the very intent of IDNs. Authors are humans, too, even
> if they work on plain text :-!
I can argue the other side of the argument for HTML and XML, though..... 
the main thing being that humans who *enter* IDNs in Unicode form 
without the benefit of conformance-enforcing software interfaces will 
just about always get them wrong (due to bizarrities of case, 
compatibility characters and other weirdnesses).

If they enter A-labels by hand, it's pretty certain they've 
cut-and-pasted them.

             Harald




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