Mapping and Variants

Mark Davis mark at macchiato.com
Mon Mar 9 23:32:53 CET 2009


On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 14:30, Tina Dam <tina.dam at icann.org> wrote:

> Hi everybody, sorry for catching up late on this thread. I was a bit
> occupied last week at the ICANN Mexico meeting.
>
> The IDN Guidelines correctly states that mixing of scripts is not allowed
> at registration time unless there is a linguistic reason for doing so (such
> as in the case of Japanese).


When guidelines do you mean: The latest posted on
http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/implementation-guidelines.htm are Version
2.2 draft 0.03 26 April 2007? It has:

   - "...domain registries will associate each label in a registered
   internationalized domain name, as it appears in their registry, with  a
   single script as defined by the block division of the Unicode code chart.",
   and
   - "All code points in a single label will be taken from the same script
   as  determined by the Unicode Standard Annex #24: Script Names <
   http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr24>. Exceptions to this guideline are
   permissible for languages with established orthographies and conventions
   that require the commingled use of multiple scripts."

These have some known and reported problems with this text, among them being
that the first sentence defines script (incorrectly) by block, while the
second leaves a very large hole for exceptions. Exceptions are necessary,
the way this is written, since Common and Inherited script characters are
not otherwise allowed -- which eliminates digits 0-9 as well! -- but that
means that lower-level registries have to have exceptions as well. And it is
not defined how one would get an exception granted: what would qualify as
"linguistic reason for mixed scripts"?
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