[AfrICANN-discuss] Current Difficulties With Displaying Internationalized Top-Level Domains

[Anne-Rachel Inné]

Sorry I forgot to do that. Here you are:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/7101414_difficulties_displaying_internationalized_domains/
ar

On 10/19/07, Mawaki Chango <ki_chango at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks AR for the news... could you perhaps also provide the
> link for the original post, please? I'm not sure the
> illustration in the text came out well as I don't seem to see
> how one could distinguish right and left from the strings of
> symbols and characters displayed, thanks, Mawaki.
>
> --- Anne-Rachel Inn� <annerachel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Current Difficulties With Displaying Internationalized
> > Top-Level Domains
> > Oct 15, 2007 8:50 AM PST | Comments: 1
> > By Kim Davies
> >
> > Earlier this week, we inserted eleven new top-level domains in
> > the DNS root
> > zone. These represent the term "test" translated into ten
> > languages, in ten
> > different scripts (Chinese is represented in two different
> > scripts, and
> > Arabic script is used by two different languages).
> >
> > This blog post is not about that. (If you're interested about
> > it, read our
> > report on the delegations.)
> >
> > What I would like to talk about is some of the difficulties we
> > face today in
> > expressing scripts in a consistent way over the Internet. The
> > fact is,
> > whilst we are at the best time in history for having computers
> > represent
> > many different languages clearly and consistently, we are
> > still a long way
> > from the level of support needed to give us strong confidence
> > that people
> > can always see what we intend them to see.
> >
> > To illustrate, I will list all the eleven new top-level
> > domains. On the left
> > is the version your web browser wants to present to you, and
> > on the right is
> > how it should actually look.
> >
> > إختبار
> > آزمایشی
> > 测试
> > 測試
> > испытание
> > परीक्षा
> > δοκιμή
> > 테스트
> > טעסט
> > テスト
> > பரிட்சை
> >
> > If you find some of the versions don't match, you would be in
> > the majority
> > of Internet users. The fact is most people cannot see these
> > labels properly
> > and consistently.
> >
> > The most likely problem you will face is that there will be
> > some labels that
> > you simply cannot see, because your computer does not have any
> > font that can
> > express the characters. When the correct font can not be found
> > it will
> > usually display something like the following:
> >
> > Computers never come with the complete set of fonts that will
> > allow it to
> > show every possible IDN in the world. The primary concern is
> > to supply fonts
> > that allow the language used on the computer to work, and the
> > rest are
> > optional. Often this is fixed by downloading additional
> > language packs for
> > the missing languages, or specifically finding and installing
> > fonts that
> > support the wanted languages.
> >
> > Finding fonts is sometimes only half the battle. English, on
> > the scale of
> > languages, is one of the simplest to represent by computer. It
> > has 26
> > letters, and they always look the same and are presented the
> > same no matter
> > what order they are in. Sure, they may be stylistic variants,
> > but in terms
> > of composing letters it is very simple.
> >
> > Take a look at this:
> >
> > On the left is the correct way to present this, but those of
> > you that do
> > have Arabic fonts may find that you see the version on the
> > right. This is
> > because Arabic has more complex rules on how letterforms
> > should be connected
> > and formed. Some software is more accurate than others on how
> > it does this.
> >
> > The same issue may present itself in Devanagari script:
> >
> > Again, on the right you can see the composing is not working
> > correctly.
> >
> > If you're really unlucky, for the Arabic version you may be
> > seeing this:
> >
> > This comes about because Arabic is written right-to-left.
> > English, on the
> > other hand, is written left-to-right. However, this corrupted
> > example of
> > Arabic has been written left-to-right - .siht ekil etorw I if
> > sa
> >
> > Ordering problems may also arise when fully blown domain names
> > are used.
> > Imagine a domain like maps.google.com. Now imagine it showing
> > up as
> > com.google.maps. That's confusing, but imagine the confusion
> > of
> > google.com.maps, or worst of all, as google.com.spam. These
> > are some of the
> > variants that have shown when right-to-left ordering issues
> > appear due to
> > software problems. (More on this issue is in this presentation
> > from the
> > Israel ccTLD registry.)
> >
> > Apart from the visual display issue, there can also be issues
> > simply in
> > transmitting these domains in communications. The DNS has been
> > carefully
> > upgraded to support these new domains, but that doesn't mean
> > you will get a
> > consistent experience in other areas. In a discussion on these
> > new test
> > domains on an Internet mailing list, one person found they
> > were showing like
> > this:
> >
> > This is because the encoding in the email is incorrect.
> > Generally speaking,
> > to fully express all the possible IDNs you need to use an
> > encoding like
> > UTF-8. However, ISO 8859-1 is often the default on many mail
> > programs for
> > users of English and other Western European languages. The
> > result of viewing
> > UTF-8 encoded labels in ISO 8859-1 results in the
> > undecipherable letter soup
> > you see above. If you've ever received foreign spam that just
> > looked like a
> > list of random letters, this is probably why.
> >
> > This is just touching on the number of problems that can
> > express themselves
> > when dealing with the world's languages and scripts. With the
> > release of the
> > evaluative top-level domains, it will provide additional
> > opportunity to
> > identify these types of problems, and work with software
> > vendors and other
> > parties to help improve their applications so these issues
> > will no longer
> > occur.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > AfrICANN mailing list
> > AfrICANN at afrinic.net
> > https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/africann
> >
>
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-- 
Anne-Rachel Inne
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