Eszett

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Sun Jul 12 11:47:49 CEST 2009


Cary,

Can you summarize some sort of bottom line out of this extended essay?

On 12 Jul 2009, at 10:33, Cary Karp wrote:

> 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.

And that means what, as far as S/s, SS/ss/Ss/sS, and ß/ẞ are  
concerned?

> 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.

Ditto.

> 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.

The Kord of the Rings?

> 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.

Man oh man, I hope you can summarize in plain English what is going to  
happen to eszett and sigma.

It's not all about gorgeous abstract reasoning.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/



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