--On Wednesday, October 15, 2025 14:15 -0400 John R Levine <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2025, John C Klensin wrote: >> --On Tuesday, October 14, 2025 22:57 -0400 John R Levine >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> On Tue, 14 Oct 2025, John C Klensin wrote: >>>> In that context, "common sense" works only if the person applying >>>> it has a reasonable understanding of the writing system involved >>>> and, where relevant, the language. If there are people in the >>>> world with that level of understanding of all of the world's >>>> scripts and languages, past or present, I've seen little evidence >>>> of many of them as active IETF participants, much less as active >>>> participants who are likely to try writing I-Ds and RFCs. ... >>> >>> I dunno about you, but I think the RPC knows how to ask for help >>> if they run into arcane complicated script questions like this. >> >> I have every confidence in that. But I also see two problems. >> First, suppose, using the "all displayable text is allowed" >> principle and with knowledge that there are communities who would >> have no trouble reading it, someone submits text in Beria Erfe. >> Where would you expect the RPC to find help? Certainly not from >> me and, I assume, not from you, Alexis, or whomever speaks up next >> on this either. The W3C per-language documents might be helpful, >> but, AFAIK, there isn't one for that script yet. > > So they say, we don't know how to edit this, you'll have to change > it unless we can find someone who knows about it. I also think > that it is not a good use of our time to try and plan for .001% > corner cases. I'm not asking for planning (or any other action) for 0.001% corner cases. I am suggesting that it would be helpful to move away from what I read as the apparent "all displayable characters in Unicode are equal" language of the current text and explicitly allow (and request) the RPC to establish a list of scripts (and, where applicable, languages) that they are ready to handle expeditiously. If my three-tier suggestion is too complicated, it can easily be turned into that one versus "everything else", with the RPC growing that list incrementally as experiences with a broader range of scripts, characters, and writing systems accumulates. That would also avoid another aspect of your suggestion: it would, almost inevitably, result in a document making it all the way through the system, making into it to the RPC's hands when authors/editors (and sometimes the process in the streams) are already a bit worn out, only to have the RPC say what would translate into "whoops, that does not work, start rewriting". In addition to the obvious inefficiency, it would tend to reduce transparency to those in the community who might want to check on the replacement version. It just seems to me that having the RPC identify what they can handle well and easily (in some way I'm happy to have them work out) so that document writers will know that other things may require some additional time, expertise, and possible rewriting, or that consulting the RPC while the writing work is still in progress would be a good idea, would benefit everyone. And it would probably save the RPC work rather than putting more burden on them. > You're rignt about the fonts, its Wikipedia page looks awful. Sadly, no surprise. best, john -- rswg mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
