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

[Sean Conner]

It was thus said that the Great marc once stated:
> >   I have to deal with the telephony network at work.  It *is* the OSI seven
> > layer burrito [1] and even *there* there are baked in assumptions relating
> > to i18n [2].  Text is limited to ASCII.  Yup.  7-bit US-ASCII it all its
> > glory.  Anything else requires some very nasty hacks.  
> 
> Note how the global telephone system has made it into the furthest
> corners of the planet - arguably further than the internet, and did
> so without worrying about internationalisation relating to their
> URL equivalents (phone numbers)...

  Phone numbers are their own special Hell [1].

  The point I was making is that yes, the SS7 protocol, used by telephone
companies around the world, isn't i18n clean.  And it's not like SS7 was
developed in the 1920s ... that's all I'm saying here.  I work for a company
that translates phone numbers (like 800-555-1212) to human readable names
(like "The ACME Company") for delivery to the cell phone receiving a phone
call (so intead of getting "800-555-1212" you get "The ACME Company").  It
was a tremendous amount of engineer to work around the SS7 limitations of 15
US-ASCII characters (and it's a hack really).

  But hey, it's US-ASCII only, so it's "simple" ...

  -spc

[1]	I have to deal with phone numbers as given to us by the Oligarchic
	Cell Phone Companies.  You would think that we would be given valid
	phone numbers as defined by them, but you would be wrong.  We get
	complete trash along with good.  And then my manager's manager wants
	us to pass along all invalid NANP [2] numbers along with the valid
	NANP numbers [3], while excluding all valid international numbers
	...

[2]	North America Numbering Plan, which includes the US, Canada and the
	Carribean, but excludes Mexico and countries south of it.

[2]	Our product is only designed for the US.  This makes it interesting
	because Canada and the Carribean aren't the US, but are part of the
	NANP, which means some "area codes" are actually "country codes" in
	disguise, but I digress ...