At 12:23 PM -0500 1/9/11, Daniel Brown wrote:
On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 11:58, tedd <tedd.sperling@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
For example --
http://xn--19g.com
> -- is square-root dot com. In all browsers except Safari, PUNYCODE is shown
in the address bar, but in Safari it's shown as ?.com
Not sure if that's a typo or an issue in translation while the
email was being relayed through the tubes, but ?.com directs to
xn--wqa.com here.
--
</Daniel P. Brown>
Daniel et al:
Translation of Unicode characters by various
software programs is unpredictable -- this
includes email applications.
While I can send/receive ? (square root) through
my email program (Eudora) what your email program
displays to you can be (as shown) something
completely different. The mapping of the
code-points (i.e., square-root) to what your
program displays (much like a web site) depends
upon how your email program works. If your email
program has the correct Char Set and will map it
to the what was actually received, then the
character will be displayed correctly. If not,
then things like ?.com happen.
Unfortunately, this mapping problem has not been
of great importance for most applications. As it
is now, most applications work for English
speaking people and that seems good enough, or so
many manufactures think. However, as the "rest of
the world" starts using applications (and logging
on to the net) it will obviously become more
advantageous for manufactures to make their
software work correctly for other-than-English
languages. Apple is doing that and last year the
majority of their income came from overseas
(i.e., other than USA).
The mapping of other than English characters was
the problem addressed by the IDNS WG, where I
added my minor contribution circa 2000.
Unfortunately, homographic issues were not
resolved by the WG. However, a solution was
proposed (I entitled as the "Fruit-loop"
solution) which was to color-code (flag) the
characters in the address bar of a browser IF the
URL contained a mixed Char Set. Unfortunately,
that solution was not pursued and instead Browser
manufactures choose to show raw PUNYCODE, which
was never intended to be seen by the end users. A
giant step backwards IMO.
Cheers,
tedd
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