Sorry I forgot to do that. Here you are: <a href="http://www.circleid.com/posts/7101414_difficulties_displaying_internationalized_domains/">http://www.circleid.com/posts/7101414_difficulties_displaying_internationalized_domains/
</a><br>ar<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/19/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Mawaki Chango</b> <<a href="mailto:ki_chango@yahoo.com">ki_chango@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Thanks AR for the news... could you perhaps also provide the<br>link for the original post, please? I'm not sure the<br>illustration in the text came out well as I don't seem to see<br>how one could distinguish right and left from the strings of
<br>symbols and characters displayed, thanks, Mawaki.<br><br>--- Anne-Rachel Inn� <<a href="mailto:annerachel@gmail.com">annerachel@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br>> Current Difficulties With Displaying Internationalized
<br>> Top-Level Domains<br>> Oct 15, 2007 8:50 AM PST | Comments: 1<br>> By Kim Davies<br>><br>> Earlier this week, we inserted eleven new top-level domains in<br>> the DNS root<br>> zone. These represent the term "test" translated into ten
<br>> languages, in ten<br>> different scripts (Chinese is represented in two different<br>> scripts, and<br>> Arabic script is used by two different languages).<br>><br>> This blog post is not about that. (If you're interested about
<br>> it, read our<br>> report on the delegations.)<br>><br>> What I would like to talk about is some of the difficulties we<br>> face today in<br>> expressing scripts in a consistent way over the Internet. The
<br>> fact is,<br>> whilst we are at the best time in history for having computers<br>> represent<br>> many different languages clearly and consistently, we are<br>> still a long way<br>> from the level of support needed to give us strong confidence
<br>> that people<br>> can always see what we intend them to see.<br>><br>> To illustrate, I will list all the eleven new top-level<br>> domains. On the left<br>> is the version your web browser wants to present to you, and
<br>> on the right is<br>> how it should actually look.<br>><br>> إختبار<br>> آزمایشی<br>> 测试<br>> 測試<br>> испытание<br>> परीक्षा<br>> δοκιμή<br>> 테스트<br>> טעסט<br>> テスト<br>> பரிட்சை
<br>><br>> If you find some of the versions don't match, you would be in<br>> the majority<br>> of Internet users. The fact is most people cannot see these<br>> labels properly<br>> and consistently.
<br>><br>> The most likely problem you will face is that there will be<br>> some labels that<br>> you simply cannot see, because your computer does not have any<br>> font that can<br>> express the characters. When the correct font can not be found
<br>> it will<br>> usually display something like the following:<br>><br>> Computers never come with the complete set of fonts that will<br>> allow it to<br>> show every possible IDN in the world. The primary concern is
<br>> to supply fonts<br>> that allow the language used on the computer to work, and the<br>> rest are<br>> optional. Often this is fixed by downloading additional<br>> language packs for<br>> the missing languages, or specifically finding and installing
<br>> fonts that<br>> support the wanted languages.<br>><br>> Finding fonts is sometimes only half the battle. English, on<br>> the scale of<br>> languages, is one of the simplest to represent by computer. It
<br>> has 26<br>> letters, and they always look the same and are presented the<br>> same no matter<br>> what order they are in. Sure, they may be stylistic variants,<br>> but in terms<br>> of composing letters it is very simple.
<br>><br>> Take a look at this:<br>><br>> On the left is the correct way to present this, but those of<br>> you that do<br>> have Arabic fonts may find that you see the version on the<br>> right. This is
<br>> because Arabic has more complex rules on how letterforms<br>> should be connected<br>> and formed. Some software is more accurate than others on how<br>> it does this.<br>><br>> The same issue may present itself in Devanagari script:
<br>><br>> Again, on the right you can see the composing is not working<br>> correctly.<br>><br>> If you're really unlucky, for the Arabic version you may be<br>> seeing this:<br>><br>> This comes about because Arabic is written right-to-left.
<br>> English, on the<br>> other hand, is written left-to-right. However, this corrupted<br>> example of<br>> Arabic has been written left-to-right - .siht ekil etorw I if<br>> sa<br>><br>> Ordering problems may also arise when fully blown domain names
<br>> are used.<br>> Imagine a domain like <a href="http://maps.google.com">maps.google.com</a>. Now imagine it showing<br>> up as<br>> com.google.maps. That's confusing, but imagine the confusion<br>> of
<br>> google.com.maps, or worst of all, as google.com.spam. These<br>> are some of the<br>> variants that have shown when right-to-left ordering issues<br>> appear due to<br>> software problems. (More on this issue is in this presentation
<br>> from the<br>> Israel ccTLD registry.)<br>><br>> Apart from the visual display issue, there can also be issues<br>> simply in<br>> transmitting these domains in communications. The DNS has been<br>> carefully
<br>> upgraded to support these new domains, but that doesn't mean<br>> you will get a<br>> consistent experience in other areas. In a discussion on these<br>> new test<br>> domains on an Internet mailing list, one person found they
<br>> were showing like<br>> this:<br>><br>> This is because the encoding in the email is incorrect.<br>> Generally speaking,<br>> to fully express all the possible IDNs you need to use an<br>> encoding like
<br>> UTF-8. However, ISO 8859-1 is often the default on many mail<br>> programs for<br>> users of English and other Western European languages. The<br>> result of viewing<br>> UTF-8 encoded labels in ISO 8859-1 results in the
<br>> undecipherable letter soup<br>> you see above. If you've ever received foreign spam that just<br>> looked like a<br>> list of random letters, this is probably why.<br>><br>> This is just touching on the number of problems that can
<br>> express themselves<br>> when dealing with the world's languages and scripts. With the<br>> release of the<br>> evaluative top-level domains, it will provide additional<br>> opportunity to<br>> identify these types of problems, and work with software
<br>> vendors and other<br>> parties to help improve their applications so these issues<br>> will no longer<br>> occur.<br>> > _______________________________________________<br>> AfrICANN mailing list
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</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Anne-Rachel Inne