Subject: [idn] Unicode vs. IDN-CDN( personal opinion )

From: "xiaodong lee" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 09:51:22 +0800

WITH SOME REVISION
Hello, every member of IDN maillist,

All that I said here is only my personal opinion, if anything
that I present is wrong, please correct me with my pleasure. I am a
student, so I try to understand such problem and express my opinion in a

student's point of view. I have often discussed such problems with my
classmates in
Chinese Academy of Sciences; they also doubt why we are still working on

such problem, which has incomplete and faulty basis, in IETF which is
the highest and authoriative techinical organizaiton in Internet area.
Including WG chairs and many kind and wisdom persons, many people have
made many efforts in IDN, and proposed many solutions for IDN, to be
truth, however, current standards and technologies cannot meet the goal
of such WG. It is a big challenge as everyone knows.

Recently, we often talked about the impact of Unicode ambiguity on CJK;
I
will follow such concept, which doesn't mean I don't support Unicode CJK

unification that is a great work achieved by some experts in CJK area.

Of course, I don't want to oppugn if Unicode is appropriate or not,
because there are no better solutions than choosing Unicode as the
standard of IDN. What I want to do is to pick out the default bought by
selecting Unicode and to explain why we do 1-1 mapping in IDN and leave
other cases in other ways, such as registration or IRNSS. Some people in

this mail list oppugn TC/SC draft is an incomplete solution and cannot
be understand, I wish what I said could help them to understand the
difficulty and essential of TC/SC problems.

Nameprep announced that it would follow the change of Unicode. Because
Unicode only collect the scripts of most languages of the world, so it
cannot handle many problems, such as TC/SC. Of course, it doesn't
collect all scripts simply, it has been doing CJK unification, all
characters in same scripts are reduced to one code point in Unicode,
that is very useful in information exchange in CJK area, but it bring
much trouble for us to do TC/SC equivalent in IDN or CDN. So Unicode is
very successful in many technical areas, but it is an incomplete
solution for IDN, for at lease it cannot meet the requirement of CDN,
which own more than 70% code points in Unicode. That is why Mr. Kenny
Huang proposed to prohibit CJK code points in IDNA, I think.

Unicode has done CJK horizontal unification, and as some persons from
Unicode said, they are considering doing vertical unification in CJKV,
which will handle some problems, including TC/SC equivalent. WILL
NAMEPREP FOLLOW SUCH UNIFICATION IN THE FUTURE? I am wondering how to
deal with many problems caused by current IDN selection in the future,
and how does IETF explain such results for so many CJK users? So as a
co-author of Tsconv draft, I proposed to solve some doubtless problems
in IDN, and leave uncertain problems for the future or other area, which

is not a big problem as someone imaged and worried. Theoretically, if
some problems are very difficult to solve, why don't we solve it step by

step?

If someone thinks I bring a problem not to be worth discussing, just
cancel it please, because when I saw recent many messages around such
problem, I feel a little pity about the future of IDN. Why don't we
select some feasible solution, more than doing hurried LAST-CALL for all

core documents.

I think we should split TC/SC problems into two parts: non-disputed 1-1
part and
the other, for the first part, it is the task of IDN, for the other
part, we could
handle them in IRNSS maybe.  and that, with IDN and IRNSS, we could try
to provide a perfect solution for end users, I think.

Anyway, I suggest all members to consider such problem carefully and put

IDN into a successful process!

Best Regards!

--
______________________________________

      XiaoDong LEE ( X.D. Lee )
______________________________________
 China  Network   Information  Center
 Tel.  (O):      +86-10-62619750-3020
 Email (O):          [email-masked]
       (P): [email-masked]
 Homepage :    http://xiaodong.n3.net
______________________________________

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From: YangWoo Ko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 11:33:07 +0900

Dear Xiaodong Lee,

You clearly explained what Chinese people suggested through Kenny Huang. 
But, what I am not still so sure are;

(1) Is it possible to make a 1-1 table which will satisfy Chinese people,
other CJK people, and rest of the world ?
(2) If we depends on IRNSS (or other non-DNS solution), how can we handle
it seamless manner ? If ordinary people will (usually) use higher level 
service only, why is "TC/SC equivalence" so important, even though we can 
solve it (partially) by registraion policy of registries ?

My best regards

-- 
/*------------------------------------------------
YangWoo Ko : [email-masked]
We Invent Enterprise Software Solutions
and Make You Secure & Powerful.
------------------------------------------------*/

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From: "xiaodong lee" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 10:59:03 +0800

Dear Mr. Ko,

As I know, not only Chinese people has such requirement, but also other people

of CJK area, of course, not including all codepoints of TC/SC. I consult such
problem with our expert in Unicode, he works on CJK area with other experts
of Korea and Japan. In some sense, I think it is trustworthiness.

Of course, we could not satify all people, but we could try to make a feasible

table for that, if we work hard, it maybe only need some months. As I know,
you and some persons of Korea have considered such problem carefully and
taken more positive actions on that. so I think it is possible, if we do not
only
care the time process to earn commercial profit on IDN.

As you know, registration solution is far in-sufficient for that. even though
it will
bring same result for end users( transparent for them), it make much trouble
for
administrator, there are so many Han characters.

If we let it be in IDN layer, and solve TC/SC problem in above layer. it will
hurt users profit, after all IDN is available for them. What we should do is
to
reduce it, if we could not solve it perfectly and completely, I think.

Best Regards!

Xiaodong