[arabic-vip] ZWNJ (earlier: [vip] Overarching principles used in Devanagari team report)

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 11:09:41AM +0000, Raed Al-Fayez wrote:

> So I think if the group is going to support ZWNJ and/or ZWJ in
> TLDs(because it may be needed by other languages) then we should
> also ask to support/reconsider the support of the space in TLDs and
> even more in all Internet Standards (IDNA RFC, DOMAIN RFC
> ..etc). Also if the group is going to support them in the TLD then
> we should add a warning that they may cause a risk and ICANN should
> study this topic carefully.

Just to be clear: what you are requesting there is that the team
recommending throwing out restrictions in RFC 952 (and consequently,
depending on your reading, RFC 1035), and also restrictions built into
IDNA2008 (RFC 5890-5894).  This amounts to a requirement that every
machine on the entire Internet needs to be upgraded before the change
could take place.  Are you sure that's something you want to ask for?

> Personally I think enabling the numbers in TLD is also important
> because we are not sure that other language may use them in their
> writing system (I hear that Jawi language do so).

I have suggested before, but I will suggest here again, that the mere
fact that someone sometimes uses a string as part of their language is
in no way an argument that such a string should be permitted as a
label at any part of the DNS, never mind in the root.  Irish names in
English and French all over the place both use the apostophe, U+0027.
That is not an argument that we should start allowing that character
in to DNS labels (even though, in a strict sense, it is already a
perfectly legal character).  The reason digits aren't permitted at the
top level is simple: they're potentially confused by end system
software as IP addresses.  (Dotted quad is not the only way to
represent IP addresses, note.)

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com