--On Monday, October 27, 2003 11:10 -0800 Mark Crispin
<mrc(_at_)CAC(_dot_)Washington(_dot_)EDU> wrote:
On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Keith Moore wrote:
>> Thanks for taking a stab at a problem statement. I'd like
to drill down >> on this just a bit.
>> What is the source of the "growing need"? Is it:
>> [snip]
I agree that this needs to be stated, but someone other than
me will have to do it.
I believe that the primary push for this functionality comes
from regions which use Latin alphabetics with diacriticals;
and that most individuals in regions which do not use Latin
script are accept the use of Latin script for multinational
interchange. In many regions where Latin diacriticals are
used, there is no acceptable transform of a surname to a form
that does not use diacriticals. Simply omitting the
diacritical causes (at least to the inhabitants of those
regions) a misspelling.
...
Actually, unlike the original push for internationalization of
email message bodies, and some of the push for IDNs, most of the
push I'm seeing for this are coming from folks with distinctly
non-Latin (i.e., not Cyrillic or Greek either) scripts... e.g.,
east Asia, middle east, etc.
I can't speak for the motivations of the others who have thought
and written about the problem.
So these are real "different characters" issues, not the
complexities of dealing with diacriticals on Latin letters and
what their omission might mean.
john