Katakana Middle Dot again (Was: tables-06b.txt: A.5, A.6, A.9)

[Wil Tan]

Yoneya-san's proposal works for me. It's a good compromise -- simple but
provides just enough context to the usage, and from various comments sounds
like it works for everyone else too.
=wil

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 11:03 PM, John C Klensin <klensin at jck.com> wrote:

>
>
> --On Sunday, July 26, 2009 17:04 +1000 Wil Tan
> <wil at cloudregistry.net> wrote:
>
> > I'm fine with this, though I'd prefer "dirt simple" to be a
> > plain "True". The advantage over (1) is that it allows room
> > for explanation and warning to registries and developers, and
> > over your proposed algorithm is that it doesn't prohibit
> > labels that otherwise contain all Latin characters (decorated
> > or not.)
>
> Wil,
>
> I have been silent on this for the last few days because I'm not
> expert enough on Japanese (not expert at all) to evaluate
> whether a given ruleset provides enough flexibility.   However,
>
> * I thought we had agreed on Yoneya-san's proposal in April and
> wonder if the additional discussion on this topic is a good use
> of time.
>
> * When making this PVALID is suggested, the conversation needs
> to shift, at least in part, from the needs of Japanese to the
> issues associated with having the character appear in
> non-Japanese (or non-CJK) contexts.   In that context, while I
> claim zero expertise in Japanese, I believe I'm adequately
> competent to have opinions about a few "European" scripts and,
> due to other work, to have competent opinions about visual
> perceptions.  On that basis, and for the reasons below, while I
> don't have very strong opinions about the details of the
> contextual rule, I'm strongly opposed to making this character
> PVALID.
>
> Generalizing a bit leads me back to Harald's comment and perhaps
> a guideline for thinking about these things.   Katakana Middle
> Dot is a "Po" punctuation character.   We have banned _all_ of
> those, modulo particular necessary exceptions -- a subject I
> hope we don't have to reopen.  The issue here isn't using
> CONTEXTO to add restrictions to a letter that would normally be
> PVALID but using it to permit a character that would otherwise
> be DISALLOWED to be used in limited contexts.
>
> I suggest that a useful meta-rule for thinking about this and
> other ordinarily DISALLOWED punctuation characters is that the
> only basis for allowing them is an argument that they are
> sufficiently required in a particular context to justify an
> exception and that they should therefore be CONTEXTx with the
> rule reflecting that particular context and that context only,
> not general discussions about where the character would be "safe
> enough".  If nothing else, discussions about where some
> punctuation character might be "safe" takes us back into a
> discussion about whether we should DISALLOW punctuation
> generally or whether we need to start a character-by-character
> analysis for punctuation characters.  I'm pretty sure we don't
> want to go there.
>
>     john
>
>
>
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