Cyrillic scripts in IDN
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Presentation Transcript
Cyrillic scripts in IDN Specifics and recommendations issued by .RU IDN working group Maria Stepanova Kira Litvina GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Who uses Cyrillic scripts • Widely used in • Russia • Ukraine • Byelorussia • Bulgaria • Others • Used also in many countries of former USSR, Macedonia, Mongolia, etc. GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Cyrillic IDN under TLDs • ccTLDs • .ru, .bg, .ua, .by, .kz, .mk, etc. • .pl has just announced Cyrillic IDN deployment • .nu • (.il?, .ca?, .us?...) • gTLDs • Deployed by Verisign under .com, .net in November 2003 • ~7000 Cyrillic IDN registered by now • Plans for deployment under .info • Other gTLDs GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
IDN registration policy • Restricting domains to characters of local language(s) only • .jp, .kr (one language) • foreseen under .ru • .no (local official languages) • .lu (nominated languages) • Restricting domains to code pages • .de, .at, .ch introducing IDN on April 1st • No restrictions • .nu GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Extract from Unicode cyrillic chartCyrillic IDN under .ru will be restricted to 33 letters of Russian alphabet full chart can be found athttp://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0400.pdf GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Main concerns • Overlapping of Cyrillic & Latin characters • Keyboard switching • Other concerns: limitations on IDN usage GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Overlapping • 8 of 33 Cyrillic characters fully coincide with Latin charactersin lower case: • а, c, е, к, м, о, р, х, у • 12 of 33 characters fully coincide with Latin characters in upper case: • A, B, C, E, H, K, M, O, P, T, X, У • Some characters look similar in some fonts: • и and u; п and n GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Recommendation • To avoid user confusion and possible speculations .RU IDN working group recommends • Not to mix Cyrillic and Latin characters in IDN • Clearly identify that domain name is Cyrillic • coca.ru visually can not be identified as IDN GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Cyrillic IDN identification <cyrillic_IDN>.ру could be solution of the problem, but the ending .ру(transliterated .ru) is not good asit coincides with ссTLD of Paraguay GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Solution recommended • Use specific ending with unique Cyrillic character • for example, .рф coca.рф can be visually identified as Cyrillic GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Main concerns • Overlapping of Cyrillic & Latin characters • Keyboard switching • Other concerns: limitations on IDN usage GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Keyboard switching both Latin and Cyrillic keyboards are widely used in Russia GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
2 keyboards, solution • To enter • www.<Cyrillic_IDN>.ru one needs to switch keyboard twice, which is inconvenient • Developers of plug-ins should address the problem and envisage possibility to enter full Cyrillic IDN with recommended ending • for example, ввв.<cyrillic_name>.рф, which seems to look like software used in .jp and .kr GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Other concerns • Limited usage • plug-ins to be downloaded • MUA do not support IDN • Less than 10% of registered IDN are delegated GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Conclusions • Implementation of Cyrillic IDN is of interest to Russian Internet community • Implementation should meet recommendations of .RU IDN wg • Further investigation is recommended by IDN wg in consultation with lawyers as of launch strategy GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Launch strategy First come first served basis or Sunrise period prior to the open registration - For trademark owners - For registrants of ASCII-equivalent domains GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3
Questions? Useful links http://www.centr.org/meetings/ga-20/idn-implement.pdf http://www.icann.org/general/idn-guidelines-20jun03.htm http://www.minc.org/events/carthage2003/papers/CyrillicLWG.ppt Contact info: info@cctld.ru GAC Regional Forum, ccTLD ICANN Meeting, Rome, February 29 - March 3