Re: [Idna-update] [I18nrp] Last Call: <draft-faltstrom-unicode11-05.txt> (IDNA2008 and Unicode 11.0.0) to Informational RFC

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Friday, December 7, 2018 07:16 +0100 Patrik Fältström
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 7 Dec 2018, at 7:12, John C Klensin wrote:
> 
>> But I still believe that, with appropriate qualification,
>> Larry is still correct.
> 
> I think we dive into the details here.
> 
> 1. I think the ability (for example) copy and paste, respond
> to, click on, save in bookmarks etc is the most important
> global requirement
> 
> 2. The ability to type, to enter via a keyboard, read on a
> bus, etc is secondary and have localization issues so very
> much different than (1)
> 
> My point was that because of this, I think retypable is very
> very very much different than other, global, requirements, and
> the latter should not (I think) muddy the waters of the first
> requirement I list above.

Agreed.  However, I still have this strange idea (very clear in
the now-ancient RFC 1591) that domains are expected to serve a
community that if often not global, a concept that is consistent
with Larry's more recent comment about "target audience".
Within such an audience, the sort of criteria Larry is talking
about are almost certainly helpful... again, as long as they
don't interfere with the sort of global ones you identify above.
Larry's criteria also make a strong argument for a clear target
audience for a given zone or hierarchy.  That is a problem for
registries that want to be able to register labels from every
possible script even if they put some restrictions on those
labels, but we have known about that problem since the very
first ICANN IDN study effort if not earlier.

So I think there are global criteria (I like your list but
imagine that we could improve it somewhat with more thought)
that every label and FQDN should support and that there are
relatively more local criteria that have to be evaluated against
a target audience.   I don't know if "primary" or "secondary"
are quite the right category names, but I think we agree about
the principle.   It is also clear to me that, independent of
anything that is done globally, someone is more likely to get
themselves into trouble (or be tricked into it whether the
tricks are intentional or not) with labels in a script that they
find incomprehensible that with a more familiar one... and that
is something we better just get used to because, beyond some
point, technology won't help.

best,
   john