IDN and language

[John Cowan]

John C Klensin scripsit:

> I suppose there are always exceptions.  In particular, the
> recommendations of RFC 3743 are about tables of characters, not
> dictionary lookup.   

I know that -- I did read 3743 first.  But in that case, whatever did
you mean by "ICANN has created a recommendation [...]  that languages
not be mixed within a label"?

> If, however, a domain decided to adopt a
> canonical dictionary and lookup in it as a registration
> criterion, that rule would be perfectly enforceable.  

Certainly.  But that is not the same as saying "languages [SHOULD]
not be mixed in a label."  That is a stricture about linguistic entities,
not about entries in a dictionary.

> Other issues occur if the writing order of
> characters in a language obeys specific rules and one chooses to
> enforce them (a potential issue with, e.g., Hangul, although,
> again, the choice of whether or not to try to enforce is up to
> the registry).  

This is even more confusing.  What languages do *not* impose a specific
writing order on their characters?

> It is not clear that the current proposal is much better than 3066
> for handling those cases, but I wonder if anyone has carefully
> evaluated whether it would make things worse.

How could it?  There is no requirement that there be a table for
every possible language tag, after all; all existing language tags
remain valid.  These tables are just tagged content like any other,
though the application of the tag is different from the usual
application.

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