RE: BOF on Internationalized Email Addresses (IEA)

There are more people in this world who don't recognize the 4 Latin letters
in Tanaka than those who do.

Jony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] 
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark Crispin
> Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 3:15 AM
> To: Mark Davis
> Cc: Keith Moore; [email protected]; [email protected]; 
> [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; 
> [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; 
> [email protected]; IMAP Extensions WG; [email protected]; 
> [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [idn] Re: FYI: BOF on Internationalized Email 
> Addresses (IEA)
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Mark Davis wrote:
> > I'm curious: why do you think that everyone would be satisfied with 
> > Latin characters only, and no non-Latin characters?
> 
> I didn't say that.  I stated my belief that, for reasons of 
> practicality, most individuals in regions which do not use 
> Latin script accept the use of Latin script for multinational 
> exchange.
> 
> It does not work well for an individual in Japan with surname 
> Tanaka to expect the overwhelming majority of non-Japanese 
> individuals worldwide to know his surname is written with the 
> Han characters for "rice paddy" and "middle", or what those 
> characters look like, or how to enter those characters on the 
> computer.
> 
> It does, however, work for him to expect that the 
> overwhelming majority of individuals worldwide to know how to 
> deal with the 6 Latin letters that form the romanization "Tanaka".
> 
> Nor is it very likely that this situation will change in the 
> future.  I doubt that many individuals in the world are 
> literate in all the world's active scripts.  Literacy in 
> one's native script and basic Latin script is something that 
> most computer users possess today.
> 
> For domestic exchange only, that pair of Han characters are 
> probably alright.  Within Western Europe, it's probably 
> alright to use Latin characters with diacriticals.
> 
> Perhaps the main problem that needs to be decided in any IEA 
> effort is if it is alright to have email addresses that are 
> only usable in limited areas of the world; or if not, how to 
> represent internationalized email addresses in a usable 
> fashion when (not if) the email address needs to be 
> represented for a person and/or computer is illiterate in that script.
> 
> A likely side issue is whether it is "good enough" to promote 
> Latin characters with diacriticals to the same status of 
> "everybody must know how to do these" that is required for ASCII.
> 
> -- Mark --
> 
> http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
> Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or 
> public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
>