From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Sun Apr 03 2005 - 10:08:23 CST
On 03/04/2005 06:05, Doug Ewell wrote:
> ...
>
>
>It's always risky to appear insensitive to the needs of speakers of
>minority languages, especially within a group like this.
>
>Nevertheless, when trying to solve the problem of confusables, it may be
>wise to consider the numbers involved. Kobon has 6000 speakers
>(Ethnologue). Sencoten has "in excess of 3000" students (WG2 N2784) but
>perhaps only 20 actual speakers (Harvey, after Howe and Cook). ...
>
Rather the opposite end of the minorities scale from the Tamil!
Nevertheless, even 20 people have their rights, although I doubt if this
language is viable. But a language group of 6000 can easily be viable
and stable enough that it should be supported by the Internet.
>... There
>are hundreds of millions of Internet users, potentially exposed to
>domain names and the dangers of spoofing and phishing.
>
>...
>It should be evident that the name "N!xau" in a popular movie does not
>justify allowing exclamation points in domain names.
>
>
Of course not, if the name is fictional. But if the name "N!xau" is a
real name in a real orthography used by a real people group, it should
be allowed in IDNs unless there is a real problem with it. And are there
real dangers of spoofing and phishing from using exclamation marks or
their lookalikes in IDNs, or is the argument to avoid them not much more
than that they were not allowed in ASCII-based domain names?
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.1 - Release Date: 01/04/2005
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