On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 11:09, Glen Eustace
This was discussed by the RAG (Registrar's Advisory Group) at some length and as you have surmised, I believe that it contributes to, what I believe, is a low uptake of such names. Add to that the lack of support in applications and it does seem to have been a rather pointless exercise.
If the success of the effort were to be measured by uptake I'd agree with that conclusion. If instead, and I'm sure you and RAG appreciated that, it is considered in the wider context of supporting the use of one of NZ's official languages in domain names, it cannot fail. Except to the degree that the work done at the registry level is being left to languish by the majority of registrars. It is up to registrars to make a business decision about the value of accommodating what was, I expect, always anticipated to be minor demand. Further down the chain at the client level another set of decisions have to made which are less likely to be influenced by parochial concerns but might in the fullness of time be simply expected from a wide range of non-Roman alphabet users, like café. I hope solving the latter works for all.
Even now, if I ask even computer literate folks how to type a macronised character on their computer I get a rather blank look.
I suspect you're polling the wrong identity group. Those who work regularly with the language will probably know very well how to elicit it from the standard keyboard.
About this time last year a number of folks on this list evaluated a number of email applications and the various browsers and the ability to use an IDN was lacking in many/most of those in common use or they were broken in some way making the use next to impossible.
As Blair has noted, IDN had to start somewhere, and it has, that the downstream has neglected it is regrettable.
Glen Eustace
Hamish. -- http://tr.im/HKM