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

[Petite Abeille]

> On Dec 25, 2020, at 13:07, bie <bie at 202x.moe> wrote:
> 
> All that said, I'll make another attempt at leaving this discussion (and the mailing list) again...

Still don't get it. 

You have a perfectly functional gemini server, written in C, using but the OpenBSD base system. Fabulous.

Furthermore, you sail through your English-Japanese-Norwegian workflow by the simple expedient of transliterating  all identifiers to US-ASCII, ala Unidecode!. Terrific.

To top it all, you can dictate the resulting identifiers, in plain English, over a rotary phone line to your trilingual Japanese-Norwegian friends. Much excellent.

All in all, everything is covered. Nothing to add. Nothing to take away. All set.

If tomorrow, Gemini adopts IRIs, nothing changes for you. Your setup is fully upward compatible. You do not have to lift a finger to keep going. 

All stays exactly the same for you.

Of course, no one on your setup can use IRIs. Only URIs. But they don't want IRIs anyway. No loss.

Arguably, your setup may not be fully compliant with the letter of the spec. No big deal. 99% there. No one is going to sue you. Just a hobby. 

But it's working. Today. For your needs.

On the other hand, it doesn't work for me. 

I do not like transliteration. I want native.

I want my Kabuki file to be named 👹.gmi, and not kabuki.gmi, nor xn--7q8h.gmi, nor %F0%9F%91%B9.gmi. Nor any other weird encodings. 👹.gmi it is.

I do not want to type 👹.gmi. I want to copy & paste. I do not type identifiers by hand, nor do I dictate them over the phone. Ever. It's error prone. And annoying.

But's that me.

I do not want to be dragged to the lowest of the lowest common denominator just because you cannot be bothered to support Unicode.

But that's just me.

What I want is Unicode. Because I like to name my file 👹.gmi. It's 2020. And it's important to me.

Moving to IRIs allows me to use Unicode file names. While not breaking anything on your side.

Staying with URIs prevents me from doing what I want. While not changing anything for you.

Why do you want to prevent me from using the names I want? 

I do not tell you how to name your files.

Why do you want to tell me?

This could be construed as rude.


* Unidecode! -- plain ASCII transliterations of Unicode text, Sean M. Burke, 2001