The same email was sent from an email account which is not listed on the mailing list. I am sorry about that. Sung ----- Original Message ----- From: DualName - ShimSungJae <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2000 10:18 AM Subject: Re: draft-ietf-idn-vidn-00.txt > Valdis, > > Thank you for your comments on the document. Please see below for my > responses to your comments. > > Sung > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 11:35 AM > Subject: draft-ietf-idn-vidn-00.txt > > Note that there is a city in China, which used to be known in the US as > Peking, that is now known as Beijing. This renders suspect the following: > > inverse of transcription of phonemes into characters. Second, each > individual phoneme of the local language is matched with an > equivalent phoneme of English that has the same or most proximate > sound. Third, each phoneme of English is transcribed into the > > This could cause a problem if the underlying domain name has to change due > to a change in the "preferred" transliteration rules, which has been known > to happen. > > Sung: A city in China, which used to be known in English-speaking regions as > "Peking," is now known as "Beijing." The reason for this may be that > English-speaking people began to pronounce the city's name as "peking" for > some reason, probably for their convenience of pronunciation, although the > city's name is pronounced as "beijing" among Chinese-speaking people. The > correct pronunciation of the city's name in Chinese is "beijing" as used > today. > > Sung: Anyway, let's assume that the city's name can be pronounced as > "peking," "beijing" and others since the same characters in Chinese can be > transliterated differently into English. Thus, when the city's name is > entered in Chinese, VIDN method converts it into several possible > corresponding domain names in English, including "peking," "beijing" and > others, as long as the phonemes of the characters of the resulting domain > names in English have the same or proximate sounds as the phonemes > represented by the input characters in Chinese. This is > one-to-many mapping of VIDN. Further, only one of these, for instance > "beijing", can be matched with the city's name in Chinese, with the coding > scheme designed for one-to-one matching (see the document for details), and > the others including "peking" can be listed as alternatives. > > Sung: For the conversion from a local language into English, VIDN does not > rely on a certain set of "preferred" transliteration rules which may change > over time, but it uses a much more fundamental approach. VIDN uses the > phonemes of the respective two languages (a local language and English) as a > medium of the transliteration, and so, there is no need to change the > underlying domain names in English. In fact, most transliteration rules are > based upon the systems of sounds of the respective languages, and the units > of such systems are phonemes. Therefore, VIDN can incorporate most, if not > all, possible transliteration rules, including all those "preferred," > customary, old, or new ones. > > Also, I am told that Mandarin Chinese and other Chinese dialects differ on > the pronunciation of ideograms, although they agree on the meaning of the > glyph. As a result, it's quite possible that depending which pronunciation > is used, several domain names would be required, unless (for instance) the > Mandarin variant was required. > > Sung: Mandarin Chinese and other Chinese dialects differ on > the pronunciation of ideograms, although they agree on the meaning of the > glyph. In this case, VIDN may provide several conversion modules, with each > being used for conversion of each Chinese dialect into English. Please note > that VIDN does NOT actually create and require domain names registered in > local languages, but it allows using virtual domain names in local languages > as the user wishes. Again, there is no need to change the underlying domain > names in English in this case. > > Section 4.4 Testing results: > > that a user can choose one. The testing results of a sample of > randomly selected domain names used in Korea show that the program > can cover more than ninety percent of the sample. The results > indicate that more than ninety percent of web sites in Korea can be > accessed using virtual domain names in Korean without creating > additional domain names in Korean. The remaining ten percent of > > A careful re-reading of this seems to indicate that what this *really* means > is that "90% of the time, our software used the same mapping for Korean > words that people had *already* used to force their domain name into the > DNS". There is no indication that the results are extensible to languages > other than Korean. For instance, it shows no indication of being able to > encode ISO8859-X national variants for X<>1 without problems (for instance, > how do you handle collisions between 8859-1 German u-umlaut and 8859-4 > Latvian u-bar, which are different characters, but are roughly the same from > an English viewpoint - other examples probably exist as well). In general, > the scheme fails miserably if the phoneme is one that is not even > approximated > in English (for instance, the various 'click' sounds used in many African > tribal languages). > > Sung: Phonemes are very universal, being applicable to any language. In the > example cited above, the collision between 8859-1 German u-umlaut and 8859-4 > Latvian u-bar may occur when the characters representing the phonemes of > 8859-1 German u-umlaut and 8859-4 Latvian u-bar are actually used and > registered as internationalized domain names. VIDN do NOT register any > internationalized domain name, BUT it allows using internationalized domain > names virtually. Thus, both 8859-1 German u-umlaut and 8859-4 Latvian u-bar > will result in the same character(s) in English, probably "u" or "eu", since > the sounds of the phonemes represented by the two characters are the same. > > Sung: The transliteration between Korean and English is very wild as you may > know. The testing results of Korean-English conversion suggest that VIDN can > be applicable to other languages, too. Of course, there may be some domain > names in English to be changed so that users can use the corresponding > virtual domain names in a local language more easily and intuitively. But > compare the number of internationalized domain names that we have to > actually create and register when we use special UCS encoding schemes or > separate directory services, with the number of domain names in English that > we need to add to follow the transliteration principles of VIDN. Going back > the examples above, the user can still access the sites using "peking" and > "beijing" in English, while the sites are also accessible using virtual > domain names in Chinese, although they are not actually created and > registered in Chinese. > > -- > Valdis Kletnieks > Operating Systems Analyst > Virginia Tech > >
