Re: Possible BofF question -- I18n

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, Jun 02, 2018 at 03:54:54PM +1200, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> I'm an ignoramus, but:
> On 02/06/2018 05:59, Nico Williams wrote:
> ...
> > Not everyone can pick up I18N expertise  quickly?  Sure, but we engineer
> > complex things, so i suspect many participants at the IETF can actually
> > pick up enough I18N expertise to be useful. I18N is not a dark art.
> 
> If a dark art is one that involves combinatorial degrees of complexity
> mixed with human perception, judgment and emotion, then I fear that I18N
> *is* a dark art. We can perhaps manage such complexity by limiting the
> scope of what we try to do in our protocols, but I for one would very
> much appreciate having an I18N directorate reviewing everything.

I disagree.  It's not a black art.  There are some corners where
reasonable people can and will disagree (should emoji be allowed in
domainnames?), and there will be some cases that require script-specific
expertise, and therefore a lot of time to sort out.  But I18N is not a
dark art at all.  If it were, then how would we get anything done in
that space?  The E in IETF stands for Engineering, not Dark Art.