Re: [precis] PRECIS bidi rule for usernames

[Sam Whited <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 2:00 PM, William Fisher
<[e-mail]> wrote:
> I've been working on a python implementation of the PRECIS specification
> (https:github.com/byllyfish/precis-i18n).

Great timing; I was just this moment looking at your library and
considering including it in some interoperability tests for a set of
test vectors I'm working on.


> Can someone please clarify whether:
>
> A. The "Bidi rule" is ONLY applied to strings that contain right-to-left
> characters.
> B. The "Bidi rule" is applied to ALL strings.

The recent draft-ietf-precis-7613bis-03 clarifies this:

       Directionality Rule: Apply the "Bidi Rule" defined in [RFC5893]
       to strings that contain right-to-left characters (i.e., each of
       the six conditions of the Bidi Rule must be satisfied); for
       strings that do not contain right-to-left characters, there is no
       special processing for directionality.

I was apparently confused about this before too, I'm applying Bidi all
the time in the Go implementation. I'll be sure to add a test for this
in the test vectors when I publish them.

I'm actually not convinced this is the correct behavior though; it
seems confusing to me that usernames with RTL characters couldn't end
with punctuation, but strings with them could. This violates the
principal of least suprise.

Maybe Peter (CCed) can clarify if I'm misunderstanding something?

—Sam




-- 
Sam Whited
pub 4096R/54083AE104EA7AD3