[UA-discuss] Regarding "RTL"

Brent London brentlondon at google.com
Tue Feb 24 23:15:02 UTC 2015


>
> I think we have an opportunity to set well-defined expectations and ensure
> implementations converge to them.


After ICANN 51 in Los Angeles, Dave Crocker and I started working on rules
for this issue, and we found it to be a messier problem than anticipated.

People have different views about the "best state" of the world. Some say
that the local-part should always be on the left, which creates a confusing
UX for RTL users but makes the rule easy to understand. Alternatively, the
arrangement could be context-dependent, but that reduces the usability of
the string as an identifier and doesn't really solve the problem of
confusability.

There's also a whole practical question of: can we implement this? The
prevalence of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm means that, unless the
rule conforms to that algorithm, new rules would create a whole *new* type
of universal acceptance issue, as some systems would process the string per
the algorithm, and others would process it per the rule.

This is such a messy issue that I think we should keep it on the UASG
backburner and/or delegate it to a group dedicated to anti-abuse, like the
m3aawg.




Brent London
brentlondon at google.com
+1 650-214-5206

On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 3:01 PM, Dusan Stojicevic <dusan at dukes.in.rs> wrote:

>  Thanks, Brent, and I agree with Mark.
>
> Dušan
>
> On 24.2.2015 23:56, Mark Svancarek wrote:
>
>  Yes, this is my concern.  I think we have an opportunity to set
> well-defined expectations and ensure implementations converge to them.
>
>
>
> *Fully right-to-left email addresses (with a RTL local-part) are pretty
> rare, so while there may be precedent, I don't think the behavior is
> well-defined. *
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org [mailto:ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org
> <ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org>] *On Behalf Of *Brent London
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 24, 2015 2:52 PM
> *To:* Dusan Stojicevic
> *Cc:* ua-discuss at icann.org
> *Subject:* Re: [UA-discuss] Regarding "RTL"
>
>
>
> 1) Where are e-mail solution providers gathering to discuss this?   Does a
> forum already exist?  if not, should the UASG create one?
>
>
>
> I think the appropriate forum for this would be m3aawg
> <https://www.maawg.org/>, although I'm unsure of whether it's actually
> been raised there yet.
>
>
>
> 2) Brent:  How has Gmail approached this?  Ignored the dots in the
> username side of the address?
>
>
>
> Gmail uses banner notifications to warn users when there's something
> problematic about a message, e.g., a suspicious From heade! r. See the
> first expandable section of this
> <https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1366858?hl=en> article for more
> info.
>
>
>
> Gmail ignores dots in the usernames of gmail.com addresses, which is
> doable because Gmail controls the gmail.com namespace. So
> hello.world at gmail.com goes to the same user as helloworld at gmail.com. We
> can't, however, do that for other domains. For example,
> helloworld at outlook.com and hello.world at outlook.com are different users.
>
>
>
> So, consumer mail clients are prepared with the LTR rule: that on the left
> side from "@" sign is name, and on the right side is domain name.
> But, they don't check this rule.
> I presume that in the RTL world, consumer mail clients do the same - with
> RTL rule.
>
>
>
> I think the circumstances are different in the RTL world. Fully
> right-to-left email addresses (with a RTL local-part) are pretty rare, so
> while there may be precedent, I don't think the behavior is well-defined.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Brent London
>
> brentlondon at google.com
>
> +1 650-214-5206
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 12:16 AM, Dusan Stojicevic <dusan at dukes.in.rs>
> wrote:
>
>  Dear all,
>
> We have RTL problem in LTR world already. Try this.
> F.E. / I will use ASCII just to make a point>
> com.gmail at stojicevic.dusan
> I send one email to this mail address and it gone "as usual".
> After a minute, I've got a massage in attach.
>
> So, consumer mail clients are prepared with the LTR rule: that on the left
> side from "@" sign is name, and on the right side is domain name.
> But, they don't check this rule.
> I presume that in the RTL world, consumer mail clients do the same - with
> RTL rule.
> The real question is - should mail clients check this?
>
> Regards,
> Dušan
>
>
>
> On 24.2.2015 2:17, Mark Svancarek wrote:
>
>  I’ve seen some discussion activity at w3.org (as recently as last
> December https://www.w3.org/International/wiki/EAI_Address_Issues ) but
> it doesn’t seem actionable.  I think we’ll need to use this group to get
> all similar issues clarified and make them usable by developers.
>
>
>
> *From:* ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org [mailto:ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org
> <ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org>] *On Behalf Of *Don Hollander
> *Sent:* Monday, February 23, 2015 4:46 PM
> *To:* Brent London
> *Cc:* ua-discuss at icann.org; Edmon Chung
> *Subject:* Re: [UA-discuss] Regarding "RTL"
>
>
>
> Thanks Brent, Alireza & Edmon.
>
>
>
> This is a very interesting question of the approach that a software
> supplier might take.
>
>
>
> I have two questions:
>
>
>
> 1) Where are e-mail solution providers gathering to discuss this?   Does a
> forum already exist?  if not, should the UASG create one?
>
>
>
> 2) Brent:  How has Gmail approached this?  Ignored the dots in the
> username side of the address?
>
>
>
> I think it’s very interesting.
>
>
>
> Don
>
>
>
>
>
>  On 24/02/2015, at 1:18 pm, Brent London <brentlondon at google.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> It becomes problematic, as Edmon mentioned, when there are dots in both
> sides. It's especially confusing if both sides contain a string that
> plausibly could be a TLD:
>
>
>
> customer.care@شزذ.يثب
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Brent London
>
> brentlondon at google.com
>
> +1 650-214-5206
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 5:46 AM, Alireza Saleh <saleh+ua at nic.ir> wrote:
>
>  There is no problem as long as the usernames starts and ends with a
> character with a property of AL (Arabic Letter), R (Right to left) or L
> (Left to right) otherwise in a LTR context it may jump around @ sign and
> make the address unreadable. The email address may also become unreadable
> in LTR context If the username part starts with L and ends with AL like :
>
>
>
> testمثال@مثال.تست
>
>
>
> the red part is username.
>
>
>
> -Alireza
>
>
>
>
>
> On Feb 22, 2015, at 11! :47 AM, Edmon Chung <edmon at registry.asia> wrote:
>
>
>
>   What about where the username part contains a dot or other separators?
> Is there a difference between “.” And “-“ or “_”?
>
>
>
> tld.sld at name.user ?
>
> tld.sld at name-user / tld.sld at user-name ?
>
> etc.?
>
>
>
> Edmon
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org [mailto:ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org
> <ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org>] *On Behalf Of *Alireza Saleh
> *Sent:* Sunday, February 22, 2015 4:07 PM
> *To:* Edmon Chung
> *Cc:* ua-discuss at icann.org
> *Subject:* Re: [UA-discuss] Regarding "RTL"
>
>
>
> This is very interesting question. I’ve also thought about it before. This
> is a new topic and there is no similar experiences. I don’t have exact
> answer to this question but overall I think people mainly prefer the RTL
> version with right alignement. however the bidi property of @ allows its
> usage in the middle of RTL texts without creating any confusions unlike
> <http://>.
>
>
>
> نام@مثال.آزمایشی <%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85 at xn--mgbh0fb.xn--hgbk6aj7f53bba>
>
> TLD.SLD at NAME
>
>
>
>
>
> *-Alireza*
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *On Feb 22, 2015, at 4:01 AM, Edmon Chung <edmon at registry.asia
> <edmon at registry.asia>> wrote:*
>
>
>
>  *That applies to email (EAI) addresses as well I suppose?*
>
> *Which Brent has been bringing up.*
>
> *So, within a RTL ! context (e.g. if the user interface or other elements
> are RTL) one should expect*
>
>
>
> *tld.domain at name.user:mailto <tld.domain at name.user:mailto>*
>
>
>
> *Is that correct Alireza?*
>
>
>
> *Edmon*
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:*
>
>
>
> * ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org
> <ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org> [mailto:ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org
> <ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org>] On Behalf Of Alireza Saleh Sent: Sunday,
> February 22, 2015 2:54 AM To: Mark Svancarek Cc: ua-discuss at icann.org
> <ua-discuss at icann.org> Subject: Re: [UA-discuss] Regarding "RTL"*
>
>
>
> *Dear Mark, *
>
>
>
> *Just a quick note about your question, it is expected the label starts
> from the right side of the address baar, and from right to left. So the
> main issue would be the alignment. Natively it should look like:*
>
>
>
> *com.microsoft.www://http*
>
>
>
> *-Alireza*
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *On Feb 20, 2015, at 10:35 PM, Mark Svancarek <marksv at microsoft.com
> <marksv at microsoft.com>> wrote:*
>
>
>
>  *Hi, I had some questions regarding my recent usage of the term “RTL”.
> By this I mean “right to left”, a characteristic of Arabic and Hebrew.  At
> Microsoft we also call this “bidi” (bidirectional).*
>
>
>
> *Here’s a discussion regarding RTL.  (I’ve also attached a much more
> detailed explanation, which includes Microsoft’s recommendations, but it’s
> in PowerPoint.  Hopefully you already! use a compatible viewer.)*
>  *Bidi display of IRIs (URLs/URIs)*
>
> *Bidirectional display of IRIs (an IRI with some Right-To-Left characters,
> eg: Arabic) has some odd quirks.  There’s an IETF WG working on creating an
> IRI RFC.  It’d be nice if we could help ensure that there were reasonable
> standards for the display of bidi IRIs.  The existing IRI drafts suggest
> using the Unicode Bidi Algorithm to display IRIs, but that has some
> problems.*
>
>
>
> User and government feedback indicates that our current behavior is a bit
> unexpected.  Currently we have some odd quirks about the display of Bidi
> IRIs in Microsoft.  This is just an example, other places may have
> different odd quirks.
>
>
>
> *Logical Order*
>
> *IE with LTR context*
>
> *IE with RTL context*
>
> http://www.microsoft.com
>
> http://www.microsoft.com
>
> http://www.microsoft.com
>
> http://اا1اا.بب2بب.ةة3ةة <http://xn--1-ymcaba.xn--2-0mcaba.xn--3-2mcaba/>
>
> http://اا1اا.بب2بب.ةة3ةة <http://xn--1-ymcaba.xn--2-0mcaba.xn--3-2mcaba/>
>
> http://اا1اا.بب2بب.ةة3ةة <http://xn--1-ymcaba.xn--2-0mcaba.xn--3-2mcaba/>
>
> http://a1a.اا2اا.بب3بب.d4d <http://a1a.xn--2-ymcaba.xn--3-0mcaba.d4d/>
>
> http://a1a.اا2اا.بب3بب.d4d <http://a1a.xn--2-ymcaba.xn--3-0mcaba.d4d/>
>
> http://a1a.اا2اا.بب3بب.d4d <http://a1a.xn--2-ymcaba.xn--3-0mcaba.d4d/>
>
> http://*اا*1*اا*.b2b.c3c.بب4بب <http://xn--1-ymcaba.b2b.c3c.xn--4-0mcaba/>
>
> http://اا1اا.b2b.c3c.بب4بب <http://xn--1-ymcaba.b2b.c3c.xn--4-0mcaba/>
>
> http://اا1اا.b2b.c3c.بب4بب <http://xn--1-ymcaba.b2b.c3c.xn--4-0mcaba/>
>
>
>
>                 ...
>
> [Message clipped]
>
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