This is really deja vu :) To be even more precies, domain names don't deal with characters either. It deals with bits that represent codepoints, that may be grapheme that forms characters.
-James Seng ----- Original Message ----- From: "John C Klensin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "James Seng" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "IETF idn working group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, September 02, 2002 10:58 AM Subject: Re: [idn] Document Status? > --On Monday, September 02, 2002 10:40 AM +0800 James Seng > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >... > > Domain name deal with script. It has no capability to deal > > with language. When I write a domain name on a napkin (aka > > "the napkin test"), say "�?�代.com", and you give it to > > someone else, you have no way knowing this is a chinese or > > japanese or korean without me telling you (out-of-band > > communication). > > Actually, James, domain names don't deal with scripts, either. > They deal with characters, chosen without restrictions from a > repertoire. As long as that repertiore is, as the IDN WG has > specified so far, all of Unicode less some prohibited characters > (or, more precisely, code points) than any of the non-prohibited > Unicode characters can appear in a DNS name, in any order, with > no restriction to, e.g., script homogenity within a label. > > > So in domain name, we cant do "multilingual". We do > > "internationalization". If you want "multilingual", you are > > not looking at domain name but something else. > > Yes. But, again, no restrictions to scripts either. > > john > > >
