I wouldn't have thought so either, but at least some people questioned the need for non-Latin characters, and went so far as to exclude them from a proposed problem statement:
> ... There is a growing need to use additional > characters, specifically Latin characters with diacriticals and non-Latin > characters, in email addresses to better serve the needs of the > multi-national Internet community... Mark __________________________________ http://www.macchiato.com â ààààààààààààààààààààà â ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marc Blanchet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Mark Davis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Mark Crispin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Abhijit Menon-Sen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tue, 2003 Oct 28 08:12 Subject: Re: [idn] Re: FYI: BOF on Internationalized Email Addresses (IEA) > > it appears to me that this thread is not very different from the idn > considerations on usage of idn in the world. So what is really new in this > discussion? > > Marc. > > -- Tuesday, October 28, 2003 07:10:59 -0800 Mark Davis > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote/a ecrit: > > >> > (I agree that it's currently nearly impossible to use computers if one > >> > isn't familiar with the Latin script, of course.) > >> > >> Which probably makes the rest of this discussion academic, unless we're > >> going to undertake solving *that* problem for Microsoft and the various > >> UNIX/Linux vendors... > > > > It is currently impossible to use the Internet without knowing the Latin > > script. However, the goal of most well-designed client software and > > operating systems is to permit the user to work entirely within their > > native language, with a fully localized system. This is reaching to India > > and other countries; Microsoft has introduced fully localized versions of > > Indic Windows just recently, and Linux vendors are hard at work to > > produce fully localized versions of their software. > > > > Email and Web addresses are the big remaining holdouts for most people. > > People should not be forced to use a script that they are unfamiliar > > with, just to use email addresses and sites in their own countries. Even > > if they are familiar with the Latin script, it is very often a very bad > > match for their languages, making it very difficult to figure out how > > native words would be spelled in it. > > > > Mark > > > > > > ------------------------------------------ > Marc Blanchet > Hexago > tel: +1-418-266-5533x225 > ------------------------------------------ > http://www.freenet6.net: IPv6 connectivity > ------------------------------------------ >
