# Re: Globalizing URIs

Masataka Ohta (mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp)
Thu, 17 Aug 95 13:24:18 JST

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    From: Masataka Ohta <mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp>

    Message-Id: <199508170424.NAA09118@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp>

    Subject: Re: Globalizing URIs

    To: mduerst@ifi.unizh.ch (Martin J Duerst)

    Date: Thu, 17 Aug 95 13:24:18 JST

    In-Reply-To: <199508150501.OAA23169@cccd.cc.titech.ac.jp>; from "Martin J Duerst" at Aug 14, 95 6:04 pm

> >As is proven with passports and airline tickets, 26 Latin characters
> >are more than enough to represent names internationally.
>
> Let us just think a little further along the same line:
>
> As is proven with telephone numbers, ten digits are more than
> enough to address anybody with a telephone around the world.

Wrong. My number, +81-3-5734-3299, has 11 digits.

> For personal names, the same is easily possible by designing
> a world-wide system of social security numbers.

For personal identification, but definitely not for names.

> >So, please don't try to solve a non-existent problem.
>
> I guess Japanese travelling around the world would be more than
> happy to have their names in Kanji/Kana on their flight tickets

Absolutely not.

> (of course besides the Latin form for the clerks that have to deal
> with these tickets),

How can you let that clerk input my name correctly, if I purchase
an airline ticket abroad?

> to have anouncement boards in foreign airports
> that show anouncements in Japanese, and even to have anouncements
> by voice in Japanese.

Japanese travelling around the world today are laughing at wrongly
represented Japanese on anouncement boards in foreign airports.

> The average Japanese has seen his/her name in Latin letters once
> in school (when Latin letters are thought), and occasionally for
> a credit card or passport application.

And on their e-mail addresses.

> Judging from the number of contributors to some Japanese mailing
> list, there is quite some percentage of Japanese that uses RFC 1522-
> encoded names in their mail headers,

In e-mail headers, Some are using RFC 1522 encoding, some are using
plain ASCII and others are using plain ISO-2022-JP with no encoding.

And, many thinks the last is the way to go.

Still, their e-mail addresses are and will continue to be plain ASCII.

So what?

> And I also know that on Macintoshes and some other computers,
> this is already easily possible, and heavily used.

Globalize domestic Machintosh, not URL.

> And it is true that the representation of Japanese with Latin
> letters is thought in Japanese schools, but there is not much
> time spent on this subject, and there is a great chance that
> the average Japanese, when asked to spell your last name
> with Latin letters, will spell it Outa or Ota or O-ta (the "-"
> should go as a bar above the O), but not necessarily Ohta,
> and show similar problems for other names.

That's no problem for URL.

> >Can your brain recognize Japanese characters?
>
> Leaving the problems of 'brain' and 'mind' to people in AI, I can
> definitely say that I can recognize and read Japanese, if it is written
> on paper or properly encoded in electronic mail.

Please make the discussion global. "your brain" means "brain of people
around the world".

> But for URLs in general, this is different. A Japanese author,
> writing documents for a Japanese user, should not be forced
> to make up document names with Latin characters.

I'm afraid you are talking about Japan localization, not globalizaiton.

Let them use % notation.

Masataka Ohta

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