[ispcp] "IDN basics" videos are up on our site

[Mike O'Connor]

hi Mark,

i have to admit i was pretty blown away by how well my web publishing stack (Mac OSX, Firefox, Wordpress, OSX Server) took to the Shavaka Registry's Arabic URL.  i just copy/pasted it off of Shavaka's site the same way i would do it with any other URL.  the only tricky part was learning where the typing switched to right-to-left.  but all the layers in that software stack were aware of the things they needed to know and it just worked.    

mikey

On Aug 25, 2013, at 12:40 PM, Mark Elkins <mje at posix.co.za> wrote:

> Thanks for sharing these recordings.
> Now I begin to understand what Language Tables are all about and why
> Variances are important. Of course - it appears that "cafe.com" and
> "café.com" have two completely different Registrants... then again -
> after finding that "posix.eu" was already registered (to a Canadian??),
> I went and registered "pösix.eu" so I had something to experiment with.
> 
> 
> Wearing my ISP hat, I have added a very basic form of IDN to my
> Registrar system - which relies on calls like:
> $punydomain=idn_to_ascii($domain,IDNA_USE_STD3_RULES);
> (I'm using PHP)...
> 
> Seems to work but I'd love to be pointed further in the right direction
> - working examples...
> 
> 
> Wearing a "AfTLD" hat, I've volunteered to help promote IDN around
> Africa (I live in South Africa).
> 
> Wearing a New-gTLD Applicant (dotafrica) hat - I'm curious what would be
> needed to eventually support Arabic, French/Portuguese/Spanish and maybe
> with time, Amharic (Ethiopia)..
> 
> Has anyone shared (or made "open source") Language Tables and/or
> canonical mappings for Arabic?
> 
> So much to learn about...
> 
> On Sun, 2013-08-25 at 07:38 -0500, Mike O'Connor wrote:
>> hi all,
>> 
>> 
>> i walked out of our last call with an action item to get cracking on
>> the "educate Mikey about IDNs" project that Chris Wright (of the
>> dotShavaka Registry
>> (http://xn----1mcbc7cp0fnu.xn--mgbaam7a8h/index-en.php) dreamed up in
>> Durban.
>> 
>> 
>> i'm happy to report that we finished it up last week and i've posted
>> the result to our web site.  i think it's great.  i learned a *lot*
>> about IDNs and feel a lot more comfortable talking about them in a
>> policy context.  here's the link to the series:
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.ispcp.info/policy-resources/idns-a-brief-whirlwind-tour/
>> 
>> 
>> and here's what is covered:
>> 
>> 
>> Session 1: Introduction to IDNs (24:49) – covers the basics of DNS,
>> ASCII, Unicode, languages and scripts. It focuses on how computers
>> process domain names. After the session, users will have a better
>> understanding of the following concepts: encoding systems, ASCII, case
>> insensitivity of domain names, Unicode, code point, and challenges of
>> Unicode.
>> 
>> Session 2: Introduction to IDNA (Internationalized Domain Names for
>> Applications) (14:40) – covers the basics of the IDNA protocol. After
>> the session, users will have a better understanding of: what IDNA
>> does, punycode encoding and decoding, U-Labels and A-Labels.
>> 
>> Sessions 3: IDN Registrations and Registry/Registrar operations
>> (25:36) –  covers the basics of registry and registrar operational
>> practices that are needed to support  IDNs. After the session, users
>> will have a better understanding of what registries need to do to
>> support IDNs, when/where the registry/registrar interaction takes
>> place.
>> 
>> Session 4: Blocking Variants (15:02) – covers the basics of variants
>> of IDNs and how a registry could provision them in order to maintain
>> the security of an IDN namespace. It provides examples of variants,
>> the security issues they pose, challenges of supporting variants, and
>> one registry’s practice to handle variant blocking.
>> 
>> Session 5: Activating Variants (16:46) – covers the basics of blocked
>> vs active variants, what the challenges of activating variants are
>> from a registry’s perspective, and Shavaka Registy’s approach to
>> active variants.
>> 
>> Session 6: IDNs putting it all together (15:15) – a brief review of
>> the topics covered in this series, an overview of some of the
>> challenges for IDN adoption and a brief discussion of why IDNs matter.
>> 
>> Here’s a link to the slide deck that Chris used during the
>> conversation.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> the whole series comes to something over 3 hours -- so i'd suggest
>> taking it in a few bites rather than all at once.  but most of the
>> bites are pretty manageable -- about 15 minutes long.  there are a
>> couple 25 minute ones that cover topics that just didn't split up very
>> well.  
>> 
>> 
>> see what you think.  all the credit for the good ideas belongs to
>> Chris Wright and Steve Sheng.  all the bad ideas are mine.
>> 
>> 
>> mikey
>> 
>> PHONE: 651-647-6109, FAX: 866-280-2356, WEB: www.haven2.com, HANDLE:
>> OConnorStP (ID for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
>  .  .     ___. .__      Posix Systems - (South) Africa
> /| /|       / /__       mje at posix.co.za  -  Mark J Elkins, Cisco CCIE
> / |/ |ARK \_/ /__ LKINS  Tel: +27 12 807 0590  Cell: +27 82 601 0496
> 


PHONE: 651-647-6109, FAX: 866-280-2356, WEB: www.haven2.com, HANDLE: OConnorStP (ID for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)