[spec] IRIs, IDNs, and all that international jazz

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 01:02:32AM -0800, spinner wrote:
> Verbally conveying addresses doesn't seem like a situation to optimize for;
> doesn't seem to happen so often, at least in my life as a Japanese-speaking
> internet user. Even among such occasions among future gemininauts, I
> conjecture that, most of the time, both parties will speak Japanese and the
> address can be quickly spelled out in Japanese.

Verbally conveying URLs and usernames is a situation I find myself in
at least monthly... even more often before COVID.
When both parties speak the same language, sure, it's more or less fine,
but trying to explain an address with a character the other party has no
idea how to input is an exercise in frustration.

> For end-users, reading, following and writing links probably will be the
> most likely ways you interact with URLs.
> 
> 1. Read/follow links with a user-friendly name/title: If the URL is
> non-ascii: Encoding of the URL may not matter much, since it will be
> hidden. If the client is capable of showing the URL upon focus or
> something, showing it in unicode is far more accessible that
> percent-encoding

Agreed. This can be handled *today* by clients with no change in the
protocol.

> 2. Read/follow links with bare URL: If the URL is non-ascii: more
> accessible to be able to read the URL in its non-ascii form

Agreed. Again, this can be handled *today* by clients with no change to
the protocol.

> 3. Write links to URLs that I control: More inclusive and convenient to be
> able to use and write URLs using the script that I'm used to.
> 4. Write links to URLs that I don't control: It'll be more
> accessible/convenient to be able to write the URL in non-ascii characters.

I'd actually say it's just *slighty* more convenient. In most cases
you'll be copying and pasting the URL. If the gemini community feels that a
breaking change that increases the complexity of implementing servers

like I mentioned earlier, that doesn't bode well for the future.

As for inclusivity/accessibility... I just don't buy it. Completely
non-technical people are going to be using tooling for writing gemtext
anyway - the rest are perfectly capable of percent-encoding if they


All that said, I'll make another attempt at leaving this discussion (and
the mailing list) again... hopefully a final decision will be made
soon ;)

bie

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