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This is a very anglo-centric view. As someone who belongs to a small nation, I'm very happy and grateful that I'm able to use my language on the Internet as muc

by Kostic 4y ago

This is a very anglo-centric view. As someone who belongs to a small nation, I'm very happy and grateful that I'm able to use my language on the Internet as much as possible.

p-e-w 4y ago
I'm not against Unicode in general. Text content on the Internet most definitely should support the full range of Unicode characters. But that doesn't mean domain names should, or identifiers in programming languages. Those are critical, fairly low-level technologies, and allowing all of Unicode raises significant security concerns. I strongly believe those concerns outweigh the usefulness of non-Latin characters in those contexts. The accusation of anglocentrism is unwarranted here. Every mainstream programming language ever created has all of its keywords based on the English language, including languages like Ruby and Python whose creators aren't native English speakers. This isn't anglocentric, it's a best-effort attempt to make the language as universal as possible in the world we live in. Internationalization at this level of technology simply leads to fragmentation. Domain names and programming languages are very different from user-focused free-form web content.
- Kostic 4y ago
  I'm not debating Unicode in programming languages but in domains. Also, I disagree that domain names aren't user focused. It's the first thing you learn as a regular web user (at least that used to be the case before, now it's usually the app name).
- mongol 4y ago
  On the contrary, the accusation is warrranted. Domain names are printed on billboards, in newspapers, shown in TV ads and a myriad other examples outside the programming domain. I have not heard anyone from a non-English speaking country argue your viewpoint.
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    > I have not heard anyone from a non-English speaking country argue your viewpoint. Well, now you have. I'm not a native English speaker and I'm not from a country where English has any official status.
    - mongol 4y ago
      What characters are present in your native language, that is not in ASCII?
      - numpad0 4y ago
        Tell me how many of top 100 websites in CJK use IDN...
      - bananapub 4y ago
        > What characters are present in your native language, that is not in ASCII? is that a joke? or are you really under the impression that most languages use subsets of the Latin alphabet? even English uses letters that aren't in ASCII, much less literally every other one.
        saurik 4y ago
        I feel like you have misread the comment you are responding to, as that question was almost certainly an attempt to verify that the person who was arguing the other side of the point wasn't willing to do handedly screw over the majority of the world that doesn't use Latin characters because their non-English language--which they had thrown out for street cred here--happened to not need anything that wouldn't be readily mapped with low corruption to the Latin set.
        mongol 4y ago
        The English alphabet does not contain non-ASCII chars. Which makes it quite unusual.
        4y ago
- lultimouomo 4y ago
  Imagine living in a world where domain names can only be written in Arabic script. Would that "best effort" be good enough for you?
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    If Arabic had the reach and status of the Latin script, why not? But it doesn't, so that's an irrelevant hypothetical.
    - lultimouomo 4y ago
      Also known as "I was born in the right part of the world, who cares?"
      - burnished 4y ago
        It is starting to seem like you are the one perturbed by the idea of Arabic script, which is weird since your brought it up.
      - p-e-w 4y ago
        Also known as "the way the world works". Which is why almost every institution everywhere uses kilometers or miles to measure distances, not parasangs or barids.
        comprev 4y ago
        TIL about parasangs and barids. Thanks!
        323 4y ago
        > "the way the world works" Well, the way the world works created IDN and Unicode identifiers in languages. How about that?
        lultimouomo 4y ago
        > Also known as "the way the world works". Wait, IDNs exist, they are "the way the world works". You are arguing that they should not exist, because you don't have a use for them and they inconvenience you. How can you justify your desire for the world to work differently by saying that it's "the way the world works"?
- KarlKemp 4y ago
  Alright, then let’s switch to Egyptian hieroglyphs for domain names and the other critical technologies you identify.
- numpad0 4y ago
  I think it is anglocentric and kind of outrageous, just that it's so deep rooted that most efforts are at most useless and every past attempts at correcting it basically had been pure annoyances. Those thinkings that translation is word-for-word dictionary lookups and that programming language is US English, are just annoyances. Perhaps with current level and awareness of multi-lingualism in computer science/engineering, this whole discussions about anglocentrism in computing and possible solutions is too early to take place; very few are even aware, much less accept, that the spoken language active during a decision making affects its result for multi-lingual people.
  - iforgotpassword 4y ago
    Yeah no. English is the lingua franca of computer science and programming. It's one of the few areas where language is not getting in the way of international exchange so much. It brings people together. I can check out and understand any random project on github no matter where the author is from and what language they speak. The worst that can happen is I can't read the comments. Even then most people still at least use English names for variables and functions. Nobody stops you from thinking in your native language while coding. What do you gain from IDN domain names other that nobody who doesn't speak your language can't even type or remember them? Apart from the obvious security issues mentioned in TFA. Same goes for handles or ids. Don't allow non-ascii for usernames to avoid scams. If you insist, have a separate display name that's displayed alongside.
    - nemetroid 4y ago
      > What do you gain from IDN domain names other that nobody who doesn't speak your language can't even type or remember them? That people who do speak the language can type them?
      - iforgotpassword 4y ago
        Oh right, before those IDN domains existed, people were just sitting there in front of their computers unable to visit any website, since they couldn't type them out. Every keyboard layout in existence for languages not based on the latin alphabet has a trivial way to switch to Latin input.
- cryptonector 4y ago
  I've used at least one programming language whose keywords and supporting library function names were not in English. There exist more than one.
- fomine3 4y ago
  Programming language is for programmers (and there are some non-English lang for education, and you can create any lang) but domain name is for everyone so not good example.
- jgerrish 4y ago
  I appreciate every project I come across that has contributors lists using Unicode, or documentation or other resources. It's a reminder that we live in a shared world. And if we start seeing more keywords in alternative scripts... That's more improvement in strong typing, IDEs, LSP, dev containers, static analysis and a slew of related technologies. It's exhausting, but it seems a little more fair than the URL debate. Of course there will be human auditing and approval advancements there that are exploitable. But it is what it is.
citrin_ru 4y ago
As much as possible can stop short of DNS names. My native langues doesn't use a Latin (or Latin based) script and think that it is very easy to learn to type and read (but not pronounce) names written in Latin script. It doesn't require learning English as a language. Also with a push from Google (and Firefox too) most users no longer type URLs - they enter a search query and go to a site from search result. I don't like this trend but site names become increasingly invisible for users.
silon42 4y ago
Personally, I have disabled IDN (enabled show-punycode)... If I there was a way to just whitelist the 3 extra characters in my language, I might allow it. Also, Firefox sadly has all individual countries TLDs enabled by default if I enable the whitelist. It should be the opposite.
the_gipsy 4y ago
Romans want to be able to dial a phone number without being forced to translate to Arabic numerals.
- numpad0 4y ago
  I kind of agree to that and would hope to be able to revisit it, but no earlier than a century and half later. We are not there yet by at least that much.
soraminazuki 4y ago
On the contrary, this is going to make URLs hard to use and would drive it to irrelevance in some countries if IDN usage becomes more common. Take CJK languages for instance. There are just so many characters that you are required to use predictive typing for every piece of text. This means that it's impossible to type CJK URLs with deterministic keypresses as you're constantly choosing suggestions which gets reordered all the time. As for the homograph problem mentioned in the article, that's not an anglo-centric fluff. It's an actual major problem that affects speakers of all languages. It hinders the ability of people to reliably type or recognize domain names. That's going to cost some people their life savings. Overall, IDNs would cause more harm than good by making URLs unreliable. It would just serve to empower search engines.

by Kostic 4y ago

This is a very anglo-centric view. As someone who belongs to a small nation, I'm very happy and grateful that I'm able to use my language on the Internet as much as possible.

p-e-w 4y ago

I'm not against Unicode in general. Text content on the Internet most definitely should support the full range of Unicode characters. But that doesn't mean domain names should, or identifiers in programming languages. Those are critical, fairly low-level technologies, and allowing all of Unicode raises significant security concerns. I strongly believe those concerns outweigh the usefulness of non-Latin characters in those contexts. The accusation of anglocentrism is unwarranted here. Every mainstream programming language ever created has all of its keywords based on the English language, including languages like Ruby and Python whose creators aren't native English speakers. This isn't anglocentric, it's a best-effort attempt to make the language as universal as possible in the world we live in. Internationalization at this level of technology simply leads to fragmentation. Domain names and programming languages are very different from user-focused free-form web content.

Kostic 4y ago
I'm not debating Unicode in programming languages but in domains. Also, I disagree that domain names aren't user focused. It's the first thing you learn as a regular web user (at least that used to be the case before, now it's usually the app name).
mongol 4y ago
On the contrary, the accusation is warrranted. Domain names are printed on billboards, in newspapers, shown in TV ads and a myriad other examples outside the programming domain. I have not heard anyone from a non-English speaking country argue your viewpoint.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  > I have not heard anyone from a non-English speaking country argue your viewpoint. Well, now you have. I'm not a native English speaker and I'm not from a country where English has any official status.
  - mongol 4y ago
    What characters are present in your native language, that is not in ASCII?
    - numpad0 4y ago
      Tell me how many of top 100 websites in CJK use IDN...
    - bananapub 4y ago
      > What characters are present in your native language, that is not in ASCII? is that a joke? or are you really under the impression that most languages use subsets of the Latin alphabet? even English uses letters that aren't in ASCII, much less literally every other one.
      - saurik 4y ago
        I feel like you have misread the comment you are responding to, as that question was almost certainly an attempt to verify that the person who was arguing the other side of the point wasn't willing to do handedly screw over the majority of the world that doesn't use Latin characters because their non-English language--which they had thrown out for street cred here--happened to not need anything that wouldn't be readily mapped with low corruption to the Latin set.
      - mongol 4y ago
        The English alphabet does not contain non-ASCII chars. Which makes it quite unusual.
        4y ago
lultimouomo 4y ago
Imagine living in a world where domain names can only be written in Arabic script. Would that "best effort" be good enough for you?
- p-e-w 4y ago
  If Arabic had the reach and status of the Latin script, why not? But it doesn't, so that's an irrelevant hypothetical.
  - lultimouomo 4y ago
    Also known as "I was born in the right part of the world, who cares?"
    - burnished 4y ago
      It is starting to seem like you are the one perturbed by the idea of Arabic script, which is weird since your brought it up.
    - p-e-w 4y ago
      Also known as "the way the world works". Which is why almost every institution everywhere uses kilometers or miles to measure distances, not parasangs or barids.
      - comprev 4y ago
        TIL about parasangs and barids. Thanks!
      - 323 4y ago
        > "the way the world works" Well, the way the world works created IDN and Unicode identifiers in languages. How about that?
      - lultimouomo 4y ago
        > Also known as "the way the world works". Wait, IDNs exist, they are "the way the world works". You are arguing that they should not exist, because you don't have a use for them and they inconvenience you. How can you justify your desire for the world to work differently by saying that it's "the way the world works"?
KarlKemp 4y ago
Alright, then let’s switch to Egyptian hieroglyphs for domain names and the other critical technologies you identify.
numpad0 4y ago
I think it is anglocentric and kind of outrageous, just that it's so deep rooted that most efforts are at most useless and every past attempts at correcting it basically had been pure annoyances. Those thinkings that translation is word-for-word dictionary lookups and that programming language is US English, are just annoyances. Perhaps with current level and awareness of multi-lingualism in computer science/engineering, this whole discussions about anglocentrism in computing and possible solutions is too early to take place; very few are even aware, much less accept, that the spoken language active during a decision making affects its result for multi-lingual people.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  Yeah no. English is the lingua franca of computer science and programming. It's one of the few areas where language is not getting in the way of international exchange so much. It brings people together. I can check out and understand any random project on github no matter where the author is from and what language they speak. The worst that can happen is I can't read the comments. Even then most people still at least use English names for variables and functions. Nobody stops you from thinking in your native language while coding. What do you gain from IDN domain names other that nobody who doesn't speak your language can't even type or remember them? Apart from the obvious security issues mentioned in TFA. Same goes for handles or ids. Don't allow non-ascii for usernames to avoid scams. If you insist, have a separate display name that's displayed alongside.
  - nemetroid 4y ago
    > What do you gain from IDN domain names other that nobody who doesn't speak your language can't even type or remember them? That people who do speak the language can type them?
    - iforgotpassword 4y ago
      Oh right, before those IDN domains existed, people were just sitting there in front of their computers unable to visit any website, since they couldn't type them out. Every keyboard layout in existence for languages not based on the latin alphabet has a trivial way to switch to Latin input.
cryptonector 4y ago
I've used at least one programming language whose keywords and supporting library function names were not in English. There exist more than one.
fomine3 4y ago
Programming language is for programmers (and there are some non-English lang for education, and you can create any lang) but domain name is for everyone so not good example.
jgerrish 4y ago
I appreciate every project I come across that has contributors lists using Unicode, or documentation or other resources. It's a reminder that we live in a shared world. And if we start seeing more keywords in alternative scripts... That's more improvement in strong typing, IDEs, LSP, dev containers, static analysis and a slew of related technologies. It's exhausting, but it seems a little more fair than the URL debate. Of course there will be human auditing and approval advancements there that are exploitable. But it is what it is.

citrin_ru 4y ago

As much as possible can stop short of DNS names. My native langues doesn't use a Latin (or Latin based) script and think that it is very easy to learn to type and read (but not pronounce) names written in Latin script. It doesn't require learning English as a language. Also with a push from Google (and Firefox too) most users no longer type URLs - they enter a search query and go to a site from search result. I don't like this trend but site names become increasingly invisible for users.

silon42 4y ago

Personally, I have disabled IDN (enabled show-punycode)... If I there was a way to just whitelist the 3 extra characters in my language, I might allow it. Also, Firefox sadly has all individual countries TLDs enabled by default if I enable the whitelist. It should be the opposite.

the_gipsy 4y ago

Romans want to be able to dial a phone number without being forced to translate to Arabic numerals.

numpad0 4y ago
I kind of agree to that and would hope to be able to revisit it, but no earlier than a century and half later. We are not there yet by at least that much.

soraminazuki 4y ago

On the contrary, this is going to make URLs hard to use and would drive it to irrelevance in some countries if IDN usage becomes more common. Take CJK languages for instance. There are just so many characters that you are required to use predictive typing for every piece of text. This means that it's impossible to type CJK URLs with deterministic keypresses as you're constantly choosing suggestions which gets reordered all the time. As for the homograph problem mentioned in the article, that's not an anglo-centric fluff. It's an actual major problem that affects speakers of all languages. It hinders the ability of people to reliably type or recognize domain names. That's going to cost some people their life savings. Overall, IDNs would cause more harm than good by making URLs unreliable. It would just serve to empower search engines.