Comment on Armenian GP's proposal

www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/proposal-armenian-script-root-zone-lgr-04jun15-en.pdf

www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/variant-tlds/draft-lgr-procedure-20mar13-en.pdf

From: Sarmad Hussain [mailto:sarmad.hussain@icann.org]
Sent: 02 September 2015 07:25
To: Dillon, Chris <c.dillon@ucl.ac.uk>; Eric Brunner-Williams (ebw@abenaki.wabanaki.net) <ebw@abenaki.wabanaki.net>
Cc: Alireza Saleh <alireza.saleh@icann.org>
Subject: Request for comments by Latin GP on Root Zone LGR proposal by Armenian GP 

Dear Chris and Eric,

You may be aware that Armenian GP has completed its work and has released the final proposal for Root Zone LGR for the Armenian script.  The proposal and its documentation is available for public comments at https://www.icann.org/public-comments/proposal-armenian-lgr-2015-07-22-en as a final step before its evaluation by IP and eventual integration into the Root Zone LGR. 

In their proposal documentation they discuss homoglyph relations between Armenian and Latin scripts, listing the following:

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զ U+0566 Armenian small letter ZA                          q U+0071 Latin small letter Q

հ U+0570 Armenian small letter HO                         h U+0068 Latin small letter H

ո U+0578 Armenian small letter VO                         n U+006E Latin small letter N

ս U+057D Armenian small letter SHE                       u U+0075 Latin small letter U

ց U+0581 Armenian small letter CO                         g U+0067 Latin small letter G

ւ U+0582 Armenian small letter YIWN                     ɩ U+0269 Latin small letter IOTA

օ U+0585 Armenian small letter OH                         o U+006F Latin small letter O

 Notes: The ARMENIAN SMALL LETTER ZA and the LATIN SMALL LETTER Q are not perfect homoglyphs but the difference may not be perceivable at normal size. A label, such as .զսօ would be readily accepted by users as “the same” as the label .quo (in Latin). The ‘g’ homoglyph situation only exists in sans-serif style, which, however, is a very common choice for user interfaces. Armenian YIWN and Latin IOTA are considered homoglyphs as their visual perception is quite similar. 6 The ARMENIAN LETTER YI and j U+006A LATIN SMALL LETTER J are not considered homoglyphs as “dot” changes the visual perception of the letter. That is why this case is not included into the cross-script variants.

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 We would request the Latin GP to kindly look at the Armenian proposal documentation and submit a public comment either supporting their proposal or suggesting any changes/additions based on Latin GP point of view.  The deadline for public comments is 30 Sept.  We look forward to the response by Latin GP.

Best regards,

Sarmad

Meikal Mumin on Sept. 18, 2015:

Dear all,

on ArabicGP we never considered or even commented on any possible visual similarity between Arabic script Alif and capital Roman/Latin script i., to give an (albeit less convincing) example. From what I understand, script mixing is not permitted at root zone level and in any case Integration Panel would deal with such cases at Integration - as probably required for CJK scripts e.g.

Best,

Meikal

Chris Dillon on Sept. 20, 2015:

"Finally, in investigating the possible variant relations, Generation Panels should ignore cases where the relation is based exclusively on aspects of visual similarity."

The sentence deals with where the boundary should be between strict homoglyphs (fundamentally the same letter but acquired a different encoding in Unicode) dealt with in the LGR, and glyphs with less visual similarity, dealt with by the String Similarity process. Its intent was that the LGR would not be overloaded by complex string similarity issues. An example of the former would be Latin and Cyrillic a; an example of the latter would be the letter l (lower case of L) and number 1.

This idea would also explain why it was not necessary for the Arabic GP to consider cross script issues with Latin and why the Armenian panel did cover them.

Some aspects of where this boundary should lie are still under debate, and that is also a reason for us to make a public comment.

Paul Hoffman on Sept. 21:

It is not clear to me that the Latin GP should addressing the issues that were sent to us by the Armenian GP. Here are a few thoughts on the subject.

1) The Integration Panel believes that the Armenian script is from the Latin script, according to Section 3.8.3 of the MSR2.

2) Section B.3.4.2 of the LGR Procedures document says "Finally, in investigating the possible variant relations, Generation Panels should ignore cases where the relation is based exclusively on aspects of visual similarity." 

3) Even ignoring the previous two points, the request seems to be for cross-script variants, such as for an Armenian letter that looks like a Latin letter. The "Guidelines for LGR" document indicates that cross-script variants might be created, but gives no hints about why we should do that given that the root zone will consist of labels of a single script (according to Section A.3.1).

This feels to me like the Armenian GP's submission is not related to ours, so we should not be commenting on it.

--Paul Hoffman