[arabic-vip] [vip] Overarching principles used in Devanagari team report

[Raed Al-Fayez]

Dear All,

[some typo fixes]

I might suggest using the following text as our recommendation in ZWNJ issue:
       It is clear to the team members that the ZWNJ is used and important to
       many languages that use the Arabic script (e.g. Persian, Urdu and 
       many other languages). Additionally, it is impossible to ascertain whether
       every font and every writing style will make the ZWNJ visible everywhere
       it might appear. However, the team have not reach a consensus whether
       to enable it at the TLD level or not due to the existence of some issues
       and risks that may affect the end users (e.g. domain phishing, reachability,
       confusability, … etc.).  Hence, the team believes that the ZWNJ issue urgently
       needs further investigations and comprehensive studies to be done for
       reaching a safe conclusion to either completely disallow ZWNJ at the 
       TLD level or to provide solutions to the risk and security concerns.

With best regards,

Raed I. Al-Fayez
------------------------------------------
Senior IT Projects Specialist, M.Sc, PMP Saudi Network Information Center (SaudiNIC) Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC)
Tel: + 966-1-2639235   - Fax: + 966-1-2639393 http://www.nic.net.sa

-----Original Message-----
From: arabic-vip-bounces at icann.org [mailto:arabic-vip-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Sullivan
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2011 6:32 PM
To: arabic-vip at icann.org
Subject: Re: [arabic-vip] [vip] Overarching principles used in Devanagari team report

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 10:44:43PM -0700, Sarmad Hussain wrote:
>  
> 
> 200C (ZWNJ): Even though there may be some policy to restrict the use 
> of ZWNJ in the TLDs, the committee felt that due to its critical use 
> in Arabic script to separate ligatures which end with joining letters, 
> there is a need for ZWNJ by the community for TLDs (even though there 
> may be limited use at this time).  Zero Width Non Joiner is needed in 
> domain names in Arabic script to separate multiple words within a label.
> 
>  
> 
> Though there is a defined rule which allows ZWNJ only in contexts 
> where its effect is visible, there are few contexts which ZWNJ may 
> still not have a visible impact.  This includes characters U+0637,
> U+0638 and U+069F.  This is indicated by the two sequences, one with
> and one without the ZWNJ:  طب ط‌ب.  The ZWNJ should not be permitted 
> following these three characters, in addition to the constraint 
> already put on its use by the IDNA 2008 protocol (see RFC 5893).
> 

I think that the above, particularly the latter point, was indeed part of the discussion in Doha.

I might suggest adding some additional text.  Perhaps the following reflects the team members' view:

    It is impossible to ascertain whether every font and every writing
    style will make the ZWNJ visible everywhere it might appear.
    Nevertheless, the team believes that the IDNA2008 CONTEXTJ rules,
    plus the restriction that ZWNJ not follow U+0637, U+0638, and
    U+069F, will be enough to prevent confusion.

?

Alternatively, 

    It is impossible to ascertain whether every font and every writing
    style will make the ZWNJ visible everywhere it might appear.
    Nevertheless, the team believes that the IDNA2008 CONTEXTJ rules,
    plus the restriction that ZWNJ not follow U+0637, U+0638, and
    U+069F, should in principle be enough to prevent confusion.  It
    might be prudent to undertake more exhaustive studies of this in
    actual systems in order to verify that deployed systems work as
    expected.

Best regards,

A


--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com


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