Status of the mapping proposals?

Elisabeth Blanconil eblanconil at gmail.com
Sun Apr 26 06:27:35 CEST 2009


2009/4/25 Gervase Markham <gerv at mozilla.org>

> On 24/04/09 18:27, Elisabeth Blanconil wrote:
>
>> There is nothing to object.
>>
>> The ".fra" project is destined to support the full French language
>> scriptural bandwidth and therefore regular pragmatic environment. Our
>> job is to support semantic addresses (i.e. also domain names) the
>> semantic of which demands majuscules.
>>
>
> [Apologies if this is old ground for people.]
>
> But in the current infrastructure, you can type capital letters into your
> web browser and nothing breaks. It even continues to display those capital
> letters to you. This doesn't require the DNS be case-sensitive. In effect,
> DNS has built into it a mechanism were every possible case-variant of a name
> is bundled together. Why does supporting the French language fully require
> the ability for (the equivalents of) http://ABC.com and http://abc.com to
> take you to different web sites?


This is very simple. The real issue we (as an R&D group) is semiotic digital
facilitation integration. This means that when some human wants to convey a
meaning, a thought, he can use a very large number of mediatic artifacts.
One of these artifacts is the character set attached to his natural
language. If that character set is stable, it means that it represents the
necessary scriptural bandwidth to carry every meaning people want to express
or need to understand in the context of that natural language (syntax,
metalanguage, usage, cultural back-ground, etc.)

The French language calls at least for a scriptural bandwidth of 90
characters. English language actually calls for at least 50. I say at least
because we work on this with different centers of expertise and of
authority. One of the reason is that French differentiate "majusculese" and
"minuscules" and even in some cases "mediuscules". The latter case is the
rule in France for postal addresses. Discrepancies with network addresses is
something that would probably call for some serious legal review.

There is a great difference in using a limited English script set as in the
DNS as a technical patch, and reducing the French script set to that English
script set, with all the undefined costs and confusion it would create at no
identified advantage.

Can you explain why case-*sensitivity* (as opposed to case-preserving) *in
> the protocol* is necessary for your purposes?


No one ever talked about "in the protocol" but the TATWEEL proposition that
france at large and ASIWG did not support and would call for the work of this
WG to come to a stop (as per the Charter).

The Charter and every of us, I hope, agree that the protocol level MUST not
affect, and MUST respect, the DNS. We are here speaking of Semantic
Addresses which are not specific to the Internet and therefore belong to the
"user application layer". It seems that we need to be very careful in
avoiding to confuse network application, interapplication and user
application layers. This also determines how to support the (virtual)
presentation layer.

In practical terms, it only means that "ABC" will be not be punycoded as
"abc", as the current Internet default (by lack of) presentation layer does.
The ".fra" presentation will therefore be different from the "default"
internet presentation transparently to the DNS. Off-protocol mapping gives a
full command to users over their Domain Name Applications (DNA).

Best.

Elisabeth Blanconil

PS. I was busy with family business today. I hope I can have some Draft
completed by Monday after-noon.
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