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

Simon Cousins simon at allegravita.com
Fri Nov 3 20:23:11 UTC 2017


When typing in Chinese using any (probably all) of the common text input methods, hitting the period key on a standard keyboard will always insert an open dot.

[cid:image001.png at 01D354BF.D813F670]
I have two browsers installed on this Windows 10 PC, Chrome and Edge. Both, when typing Chinese into the browser URL bar, insert an ascii dot when the period key is hit. I’d assume just about all contemporary browsers would do this. It’d be crazy annoying to the user, otherwise.

[cid:image002.png at 01D354C0.08FDEF70]

Best, S.

Simon Cousins | 夏明
CEO, Allegravita LLC & 北京乐微塔营销咨询有限公司
USA: 32 W 39 St 4th Floor, New York NY 10018
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From: ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org [mailto:ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Jim DeLaHunt
Sent: Friday, November 3, 2017 4:17 PM
To: ua-discuss at icann.org
Subject: Re: [UA-discuss] The Open Dot as a label delimiter in Chinese and Japanese


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






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    --Jim DeLaHunt, jdlh at jdlh.com<mailto:jdlh at jdlh.com>     http://blog.jdlh.com/ (http://jdlh.com/)

      multilingual websites consultant



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