Re: changes between imaa-01 and -02

On 17:11 07/08/03, Paul Hoffman / IMC said:
>At 2:12 PM +0200 8/7/03, J-F C. (Jefsey)  Morfin wrote:
>>At 04:46 07/08/03, Adam M. Costello wrote:
>>>     Should IMAA support case-sensitive mail exchangers?  No.
>>
>>I thought we made clear that yes.
>
>I don't see that in the mailing list archives. Could you point to the 
>messages that said we should?

Last mail on the matter was a mail of mine responding Adam Costello on 
20:13 23/04/2003. It repeated my request and rose questions that were never 
addressed further on, but which basically make the support mandatory (by 
this system or the real final one). I understand this at least as leaving 
the question open. I did not press it because of other obligation and the 
understanding of Adam silence as an OK.


Let's take back the cons and pros as I understand them.

Cons. No RFC requires it. Not konwn software support them. No technical 
reasons risen in here seem to demand them. "Keyboards are in upper cases" - 
that one would be good if there was no upper-case key. John Klensin: people 
tend in computing (and elsewhere) to understand "john" as "John" or "JOHN", 
but John did not really investigated it. Supporting case sentivity would be 
"absurd".


Pros. Adam says that punnycode support them but he did not documented it, 
so the problem is not technical impossibilty/. Several people explained 
that in their language the same word with or not with leading or in text 
upper-case had different meanings. DOS/WIN does not make difference, but 
Unix does, so will Netix. Passwords make differences and can be used in 
LHS. TMs make difference: being forced to accept a third party lower case 
name can lead to consider that one does not deffend the TM using the same 
string wih upper cases. The first juridprudence would be be a killer. Is 
"ford" the same as "John Ford" or "FORD Cars" when "Ford/FORD" are 
possible? I will not bet on it - is there a lawyer in the plane?

Laws require that addresses conform with Title for validity (a bad 
orthograpy in the addressing of a document can be a procedural error: in a 
country deciding this applies to LHS [there are 190 countries] e-mail would 
be ruled out from Justice/e-govement procedures with an international impact).

The French cultural exception is now in the European Constitution and this 
exception now applies to the 25 European countries, plus our regional 
cultures (laws must respect cultural priorities).  I reported that I 
questionned people during WSIS meeting and I engaged all of you to do it 
with friends and families: everyone will basically respond that if one 
decided to use upper and lower cases, there were many reasons and that they 
want these reasons respected.

I just read yestderday a very interesting compartive analysis by scolars 
from many horizons on the US culture (indivually centric) being far less 
concerned by the respect of the language than European and other (community 
centric) cultures, where touching to the language is touching to the 
community and felt as a real agression. We all have examples in mind, don't 
we? Most people in the world will not care about former RFCs and 
non-existing yet programs. Once they know this is possible they will only 
demand to be personnally respected by the standard and by the programs.

IDNA is not accepted well because it is only an internationlization of the 
legacy namespace. The ML.ML demand is an operators demand (James Seng 
documented that Variants accomodated ccTLD needs, not the users needs far 
too complex to consider). Users want "vernacular names and addresses" 
(these they use all the day long in life, streets, geography, books, laws, 
school learning and teaching. Their current relative disinterest in 
Internet and DNS is partly comming from that: the brainware layer is not 
happy with the limitations imposed by the software layer).

I fully accept this is difficult to consider as priority in an American 
oriented technical group. As one of the BoD Members of Eurolinc (a language 
organization accepted in the ccTLD WG-IDN or by the MINC, Europe and active 
at WSIS, dialoging with ITU) I call testify that it is not the same with 
language and cultural group from every culture.

Our problem today, in order to specify correctly is that no many people are 
interested in participating to a standardization process. So we have to ask 
around, not only to our one selves.

I fully accept that "phoffman" or "jefsey" are technical short-cuts and 
nice nicknames. But will you ask you mother or your daughter to coin such a 
nickname for her driving license, hospital care, etc. May be as an American 
will you? I will certainly not. But I am afraid 90+% of the mankind would 
not accept either.

Most of the countries are heading towards national eletronic IDs: they will 
not accept jokes and nicknames and orthographic errors as names (they will 
not accept also what may create confusion or reduce the number of names). 
They will not change all their legal body to respect internet oddities (I 
am sure that a good case about forcing someone to accept lowercases only 
may lead to jail in France: let consider the cases where dropping the upper 
cases will make someone's name a racist joke).

For example I will certainly not accept as legally binding documents sent 
to me to any other address than Jean-Franç[email protected] or what ever 
the French Parliament will vote for a national naming service French 
semantic. I am sure it will be the same the world over, in Arabic, Chinese 
or Australian.


I do not know what may convince you people in here but let take a simple 
example. [email protected] will be tought by most as a certain Doug's e-mail. 
But [email protected] will be obvious to everyone of French language: this is 
the CEO's Office e-mail address.

You may obviously chose not to support case-sensitivity because Americain 
makes low use of it. It will only be an additional and presing reason for 
us to call and obtain European funding to R&D a new, modern nd no spam mail 
system. You will be remembered as those who made it a legal and technical 
necessity. Thank you.

jfc