--On Wednesday, 06 December, 2000 10:22 -0500 Dan Kolis
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dan K says:
> 1) your right. with your tld .de I assume for the moment you
> also speak German. The difference is what you 'try' when a url
> doesn't work. If you tried:
> > http://�rehct.de
> > and it didn't work you would probably try:
> > http://brehct.de
Dan, I suggest that many German-speakers (and even more
automated systems) would probably try, not the above, but
http://ssrehct.de/
which would, I believe, be the algorithmic rendering of the
non-ASCII character. And, while this isn't a good example for
a number of reasons (my memory is poor, but I don't recall ever
seeing Eszett at the beginning of a word and am not sure it is
possible), therein lies much of the problem because the mapping
is not reversible unless one infers from the presence in .DE
that German-language mapping rules must apply (a *very* risky
assumption).
john
