IDNA Comparisons

[Gervase Markham]

On 17/07/09 08:09, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:
>> Braille is, according to my limited understanding, a method for
>> encoding another character set in a form readable by people without
>> sight. (The version I know of encodes something pretty like ASCII, but
>> perhaps in other places in the world there are other versions encoding
>> other character sets.) I therefore can't see why one would want
>> Braille domain
>
> The prior line of text contains the funniest statement made in almost 10
> years of off-again, on-again work on the text-labels-in-ASCII problem.

Thank you for laughing at my lack of understanding. Now perhaps you 
could explain what I got wrong?

> Second, thinking that braille is "like" a character set, and may,
> without loss of utility, for the purposes of forming identifiers for
> resources, be replaced by the "likened" character set, may be incorrect.
>
> Personal note, when my son was first diagnosed deaf at age 2, I had to
> confront the "deef culture" vs "cochlear implants" question, and I spent
> some time at the Maine School for the Deaf, and came to a conclusion
> that forms what I'm writing here -- ASL is a separate, gestural
> language.

Of course it is. Did I ever deny that? But ASL (or BSL or any of the 
other national sign languages) and Braille are two entirely different 
things.

Checking the Wikipedia entry on Braille seems to support my 
understanding. But perhaps, if there is still doubt, asking a Braille 
user might be more fruitful than further speculation.

Gerv