Eszett

[Cary Karp]

One of the basic precepts behind the algorithmic determination of the
codepoints available for inclusion in IDNs was the avoidance of a
character-by-character debate of the elements of the resulting
repertoire. The protracted attention being paid to the Esszet
simultaneously demonstrates the basic wisdom of that approach, and the
frailty of the underlying assumption that any inevitable
character-specific discussion would not be more than a marginal concern.

Another of the precepts was that it should be possible for a language
community that is not currently paying attention to the
internationalization of the namespace to come forward later and request
the addition of elements to the available repertoire. We've been careful
to indicate that it may not be possible for this to include every
character that might appear in literary contexts, but there has to be
some generally applicable baseline expectation of what is reasonable. In
an alphabetic context such as the one under present consideration, there
would need to be some extraordinarily powerful reason to exclude a
letter that appears as a discrete element in the target language's
alphabet as it is taught to children in school, and appears in standard
desktop orthographic references.

The question of what might constitute a representative delegation for a
language community when petitioning the Keepers of the Repertoire
broaches legitimate debate of its own (as does the identity of the
KotR). However that might ultimately be sorted out, I don't think there
is any candidate such authority in this working group. National TLD
registries are certainly qualified to speak about the consequences of
our action for their own activities, and know far more than the rest of
us about the interests of the language communities that they primarily
serve. They are not, however, nor do I suspect any of them feels
comfortable being regarded as, orthographic authorities.

Quoting Mark:

> We should have differences from the current state (IDNA2003) that
> cause a URL to go to a different site *only* if there is overwhelming
> justification and little negative impact.
> 
> There is convincing evidence that this divergence is necessary for
> two characters: ZWJ, and ZWNJ. Fortunately these are extremely low
> frequency characters in current URLs within web pages, so the
> negative impact is quite limited.
> 
> There is not overwhelming justification for the two others: es-zett
> (sharp S) and final sigma. As a matter of fact, the German NIC has
> come out against the former. We do not have enough involvement from
> the Greek community to have any real case for the latter. And these
> are extremely frequent characters in the respective language
> communities

I certainly hope that I am reading this incorrectly if I take it to mean
that since the Greek community has not yet put forward overwhelming
justification for the availability of the final sigma via this list, we
can prevent them forever more from doing so in any other forum.

If we have a choice between providing support for something that any
ten-year old schoolchild knows to be correct, or causing transient
discomfort for the technical community, I don't see the justification
for our feeling that we even have a choice.

/Cary