On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 06:49:13AM -0600, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> I agree with Dave in the general case ("the goal is to go beyond
> today's Internet"), but am wondering if that also requires us to go
> beyond today's language capability when we start leaking these
> addresses between enclaves. I am sensitive to the comments expressed
> in this thread, that a heckuva lot of people have to learn two sets of
> glyphs, and I'm not one of them - I just don't see how we do it any
> other way.
In Europe we have a lot of character sets. I use 8859-1, a few
kilometers away in Greece they use 8859-7. As with all the math
I at least have an idea about the characters. However neither my
keyboard nor my X server can currently be used for that out of the
box (as it is).
IMHO in all that discussion it is important with the "case studies"
to differentiate if the address has to be keyed in by some human
or if I would only need more sophisticated software to deal with the
problem.
I am not too enthusiastic with all that internationalization, but:
- In Germany the DENIC has announced they will provide internationalized
domain names probably next year. The run on this names is really big.
Other NICs surely have similar plans. So with these domain names we
need a method to transport email there.
- If I want to go to the olypic games in Greece next year and the website
has an email address with greek characters, will I be able to click on it
type some text, and my MUA/browser will do the right thing? If it will
work and everyone will be able to recognize "this is the email address"
that's fine for me. XML for more structure and better browsers will help
for the latter some time.
- How long will there be paper business cards? Don't a lot people
already exchange business cards per handheld/organizer? And those
companies with international contacts will have accounts in the
according coding or at least in a coding that is familiar for the
other party. Software will be able to do the rest. So you will have to
carry a small bag of different cards with different codings until you
will have no paper cards any longer, because they are too difficult to
handle in this area.
A big fair in Munich had tested kinda electronic cards lately. As you
buy your ticket you type in your contact data and it is printed on the
card as a barcode. Exhibitors had barcode readers and special
software, so if you want to make a contact you hand over your ticket
and the infos flow ...
There WILL be a lot of problems with internationalized email addresses
but IMHO a lot of them will be solvable by sophisticated software.
Some of them won't as in print media (and also tv. radio, ...) a domain
µ.de (in 8859-1)
and
µ.de (in 8859-7)
looks identical, but isn't as the µ sit on different codes. So the
commercials will be fun:
"visit us in the Internet on www.µ.de in good old 8859-1 coding."
And despite all these I think it will be a long time until addresses like
jürgen.größl@hüberbräu.de
will look familiar (even if this is a (for me) local coding).
\Maex
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