On Mar 19, "D. J. Bernstein" <djb(_at_)cr(_dot_)yp(_dot_)to> wrote:
Go sell a Greek user an ``internationalized domain name'' with a delta,
Pete. Then tell him that most of his correspondents will see the delta
as incomprehensible gobbledygook rather than a delta. See what he says.
Okay, I'm not Greek, but as the registered owner of ?.com, I'll tell you*.
I expect that some windoze users will display it (?.com) as a box dot
com; mac users will display it as a delta dot com; and everyone else
will display it as a bq--eida.com (RACE), or dq--uuyg.com (DUDE), or
zq---h9g.com (AMZ_C), or punycode, or whatever -- AND, they will
continue to do so until they have the appropriate software on their
machines to handle the conversion. That's what I expect.
On the other hand, I do not expect that the IDN will eventually
produce something that will transparently produce the appropriate
glyphs on millions of users machines. In my mind, that's simply not
possible because I think it requires that every machine on this
planet have a complete copy of UNICODE installed and available.
Granted, I am clueless about a lot of this IDN stuff and I may be
"hubris" (as Mr. Paul Hoffman once informed me) in my offering my
opinion to the "Gods of the Internet", but I do think I see the
distinction between which side of the modem one is on and what
responsibility lies in each camp.
OK, scenario 1:
You tell him that although it's gobbledygook to people without greek
alphabet support, it will still work. It's not convenient, but it WILL work.
Guaranteed. For his business colleagues and friends in Greece, who DO have
the latest and greatest software, it will display as a delta. His ISP hasn't
had to upgrade, and everybody in the world can use his domain - eventually
they will see it as a delta as well, but for now they see it as an encoded
string they can still use no problem.
<-snip>
If you were IT director of a large firm, and you had a choice as to which to
roll out, which would you choose?
--
Paul Robinson
I would vote for scenario 1. Besides, IMHO (in my hubris opinion)
that's the only way it's going to work.
tedd
* The Greek version of "delta" registers a internal error -- it's the
Math language set that provides an acceptable "delta".
--
http://sperling.com