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Re: [Simple] SIMPLE chat: Internationalization and normalization of nicknames

Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> Fri, 02 March 2012 21:23 UTC

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Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:23:45 -0700
From: Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im>
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To: Ben Campbell <ben@nostrum.com>
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Cc: simple@ietf.org, Paul Kyzivat <pkyzivat@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: [Simple] SIMPLE chat: Internationalization and normalization of nicknames
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On 3/2/12 12:08 PM, Ben Campbell wrote:
> 
> On Mar 2, 2012, at 10:39 AM, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
> 
>> On 3/1/12 5:54 PM, Ben Campbell wrote:
>> 
>>>> OK. It seems that you might also be making some authorization
>>>> decisions based on the nickname, e.g., if you've reserved a
>>>> nickname then I can't get that nickname (can I join the
>>>> chatroom but just not with that nickname?).
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yes, that is true. We do need an equality operator in some sense.
>>> (And yes, assuming no other policy issue was blocking you, you
>>> could still use a different nickname)
>> 
>> And this presumably needs some notion of canonicalization, so that
>> you can't get two nicknames that compare as different but *look*
>> the same.
> 
> That's going to be a very hard problem to solve. I suspect we will
> end up with text that points out that this can happen, but leave it
> up to implementors to figure out what to do about it.

The problem of so-called confusable characters is impossible to solve.
See for instance:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-precis-framework-01#section-10.3

The Unicode Consortium has gone a bit farther:

http://unicode.org/reports/tr39/#Confusable_Detection

You can nibble around the edges here, but foolproof solutions cannot be
had (in large measure because humans are so easily fooled).

> (Peter: Do you have your Cherokee example handy?)

http://stpeter.im/journal/1420.html

That is: ᏚᎢᎵᏋᎢᏋᏒ != STPETER (and Cherokee Letter Quv = Ꮛ is not defined
by the Unicode standard as confusable with, mapped to, or otherwise
equivalent to Latin Uppercase E despite their surface similarity).

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

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