Unicode & ICANN Part 3

From: linuxa linux (linuxalinux@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Sun Aug 31 2008 - 06:24:02 CDT

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    I would like to thank those that have answered the Unicode & ICANN postings to this list. There is another issue for discussion and your answers and criticism would really help:

    Due to the ASCII character encoding being the core/monopoly and primarily basis to the internet/web infrastructure that has become the conventional starting point for subsequent Unicode and Punycode character encoded internet/web, this has brought usability and integration problems for a truly multilingual internet/web because presently you cannot have domain names that are multilingual, for example: japanese and english language mixed character domain names, hindi and english language mixed character domain names etc.

    Another example, there is not much browser / URL bar integration and usability innovation that allow for a non-ASCII language domain name to stay non-ASCII script on the browser / URL bar without it changing to Punycode.

    Thus there is a basic underlying problem that can only be rectified when all the languages get represented on the internet/web infrastructure and not only ASCII character encoded languages. ASCII monopoly has not helped usability and integration for the internet/web and a Unicode approach is need. Unicode has accomplished things at the non-internet computer ground and now it needs to expand at the internet/web ground. Otherwise things are not equal between the ASCII and non-ASCII languages. For example you are seeing Punycode and not the non-ASCII script for non-ASCII domain names on the browser / URL bars -- a solution for this example here could perhaps be to have even ASCII based domain names to be also Punycoded as a standard not just non-ASCII based domain names to be Punycoded, thus bringing equality. When you get equality between the two then there will be browser / URL bar integration and usability innovation simultaneously between all the
     languages. I put this to Tina Dam at ICANN, the person handling these issues and Paul Twomey, the ICANN President/CEO and Pamela Miller at PIR the .ORG registry a few months ago however there was not much progress with them.

    Regards

    Meeku

          

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