[UA-discuss] The Open Dot as a label delimiter in Chinese and Japanese

[Jim DeLaHunt]

Don:

 > Does anyone have reference or even perception to how widely used the 
Open Dot is in Chinese, Japanese and/or other script?

Sure. Starting references: 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_punctuation#Punctuation_marks>, 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_punctuation#Full_stop>.

In my experience developing publishing software and fonts for high-end 
Japanese typography, I can confirm that U+3002 [。] is routine in 
Japanese language text.

However.

In English language orthography, the U+002E FULL STOP [.] is used as a 
delimiter between fields of structured data, as well as a sentence 
ending punctuation.  Consider a phone number like 212.555.1212, or a 
date like 3.11.17 . I think it is clearer to understand the U+002E 
between labels of a domain name as a delimiter rather than as a 
sentence-ending full stop.

In Chinese and Japanese language orthography, what are the marks 
conventionally used as delimiters in everyday text?

And,

 > UASG004 states “We expect software to transform the ‘open dot’ to a 
standard ASCII dot “.”, thus making use of the already registered domain 
name.”

Do we know what the source is for this expectation?  Did it come from 
perspectives informed about Chinese and Japanese culture? Did this 
perspective show that U+3002 [。] would be preferred as a delimiter 
between domain name labels, over U+002E [.] or other punctuation?   Or 
did we at UASG make a guess at the Chinese and Japanese perspective?

If we are not confident that U+3002 [。] is preferred as a delimiter by 
people in those cultures, I think UASG should consider very carefully 
before advocating its use.

Best regards,

               —Jim DeLaHunt, Vancouver, Canada


On 2017-11-02 17:10, Don Hollander wrote:
> G’day:
>
> The UASG has in the past indicated that good practice is to treat the 
> Open Dot as a label delimiter, just like the traditional full-stop.
>
> The ideographic full stop (U+3002 [。]) is used in languages such as 
> Chinese or Japanese to mark the end of a sentence. UASG004 states “We 
> expect software to transform the ‘open dot’ to a standard ASCII dot 
> “.”, thus making use of the already registered domain name.”
>
> We found that some browsers do this.
>
> As we go through the Linkification review, we’re not seeing this 
> happen for social media communications apps.
>
> Does anyone have reference or even perception to how widely used the 
> Open Dot is in Chinese, Japanese and/or other script?
>
> Don
>
>
>
> Don Hollander
> Universal Acceptance Steering Group
> Skype: don_hollander
>
>
>

-- 
     --Jim DeLaHunt, jdlh at jdlh.com     http://blog.jdlh.com/ (http://jdlh.com/)
       multilingual websites consultant

       355-1027 Davie St, Vancouver BC V6E 4L2, Canada
          Canada mobile +1-604-376-8953

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