Jim DeLaHunt
Jim DeLaHunt is a Canadian software engineer with a long career in technology which intertwines with human language and culture. He has long experience in type, text layout, font technology, Unicode, and internationalisation.
- He worked in the Type group at Adobe Systems, where he helped ship Japanese OpenType fonts, and led development of a system for typesetting "gaiji" (外字) in Japanese typesetting.
- He was a solo software engineering consultant, doing back-end development and project management for industries as varied as electric power distribution and long-haul trucking.
- He has been a frequent presenter at the Internationalisation and Unicode Conferences in North America.
- He is a member of the Canadian delegation to the ISO 10646 standard, which parallels The Unicode Standard.
- He has volunteered with numerous free libre and internationalisation projects, including Joomla, Wikipedia, IMUG, MacPorts, and MusicBrainz. He frequents Fediverse conferences like FediForum, FediCon, and recently SWICG.
You can find him at @jdlh@mstdn.ca, at jdlh.com, and on the Fediverse wherever the #i18n or #GloballyInclusive hashtags appear.
議程
A person's handle is their name and address on the Fediverse. But despite people using the Fediverse in many languages from all over the world, almost all handles are limited to Latin script letters and numbers: @somebody@example.com . Instead, people should be able to use a handle in their own language and characters, e.g. @小明@範例.測試 or @김@예시.테스트. We call this "globally inclusive Fediverse handles".
This talk explains the reasons why handles are now limited to letters and numbers. We look at the role of specifications, and existing software such as Mastodon. We look at the history of internationalising other address types such as email addresses ( जिम@डाटामेल.भारत ) and domain names ( http://ยูเอทดสอบ.ไทย ). We list some rules from DNS, Unicode, and IETF about what characters should be allowed and forbidden: the Fediverse can build on them.
We propose a path forward, based on the history of email addresses and domain names. That path starts with brave pioneers, who want to use their own language in their Fediverse handles, even when it is difficult. The next step is helping extend specifications so they are globally inclusive. Third is contributing to open source software to remove their limitations for handle characters. Hopefully, many of those pioneers are at COSCUP. Maybe this meeting will be the time when we meet and start to work together.