Mapping and Variants

[Tina Dam]

Thanks Mark, yes these are the Guidelines I was referring to. As we are expecting to revise the Guidelines as the IDNA revision is progressing (the two have always followed parallel tracks) it would be very helpful if you could send me your suggested re-write off-list.

Tina


From: mark.edward.davis at gmail.com [mailto:mark.edward.davis at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Mark Davis
Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 3:33 PM
To: Tina Dam
Cc: Martin Duerst; Vint Cerf; idna-update at alvestrand.no; John C Klensin
Subject: Re: Mapping and Variants



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