IDN in the news

[John C Klensin]

--On Wednesday, October 28, 2009 17:30 -0700 Larry Masinter
<masinter at adobe.com> wrote:

>> The body said it that it was finalising plans to introduce web
>> addresses using non-Latin characters.
> 
> "web addresses" would, you think, refer to IRIs, and not
> just domain names,  so is it IDN in the news after all?

ICANN has no control at all over IRIs.  The majority of the
ICANN participants are focused on the "domain names market" and
show very little interest in actual usability of those domain
names.  I suspect, reinforced by some comments from Seoul, that
"web addresses" represents more inferences from a reporter who
isn't getting any of the subtle (or not-so-subtle) nuances of
the situation.

> Note there is an IRI BOF IETF'76. There's been very little
> feedback on the public-iri at w3.org mailing list about
> willingness to help (or even participate).

Larry, I can't speak for others, but I've been completely
swamped with other work and had to pull time away from other
time-critical things to even get the post-last-call drafts up.
I hope that, between now and the beginning of the Hiroshima
meetings, I can get caught up on, and respond to, both the IRI
thread and the "mailto:" one.  I do expect to participate in the
BOF, but there just have not been enough hours in a day to read
the threads, much less comment thoughtfully.

    john