At 12:08 01/10/09 -0400, ben wrote: >At first, the '1','l' may not seem like a good analogy for TC<->SC >conversion because we definitely do *not* want to map 'l' with '1'. >However, the confusion of '1' and 'l' does illustrate why TC<->SC is >so important. For example, when a person is given 'l.TLD', he can >easy type in '1.TLD' instead and have absolutely no idea why he cannot >reach the intended website. In English the chance of such a confusion >is only limited to a few cases (such as '0' and '1') where as for >Chinese, *every single* Chinese character poises the opportunity for >such confusion. Remember, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese >are indistinguishable to many users of CDNs of certain >backgroud/education/location/culture. (Given certain Chinese >characters, even someone as educated in Chinese as I, cannot tell you >whether it is traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese.)
This is a good point. But please note that you don't actually have to know whether a character is simplified or traditional. If you work on a simplified Chinese system or with a simplified Chinese input method, you will just get simplified Chinese characters as the first choice from you input method. Same thing the other way round for traditional Chinese. This means that if somebody wants to have a domain name usable both is China,Singapore,.. and in Taiwan,Hong Kong,..., they have to do two registrations. Of course, there are cases where there are more registrations needed (e.g. for simplified characters used in Taiwan), but these are exceptions. Also, for most characters where there is actually a difference (there are many cases where there is none, and which are therefore unified), it is quite easy to tell whether they are simplified or not. The main reason for this is that most simplifications are very systematic. Of course, because there are so many Chinese characters, there are always some that you don't know. That is something that applies to any other aspect of Chinese characters. Regards, Martin.
