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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Friends and Colleagues,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Those who are interested in IDN work or know someone or some institute who could contribute to the advancing of the usage of scripts and languages on the Internet and in domain names, please read on. Please feel free to circulate the message around.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Thank you,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Fahd Batayneh<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='color:#1F497D'>ICANN<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>Sent:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Saturday, August 02, 2014 12:25 AM<br><b>Subject:</b> [vip] Speak up for your Language! Join a Panel Today<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Dear Community Member,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify'>In the past, labels in the Internet’s Root Zone could only contain ASCII characters. The rules for creating new top-level domain labels were simple: labels must (i) only be composed of letters (a-z) in the English alphabet, and (ii) consist of two to 63 characters. All of that is changing now. The future holds a multilingual Internet, where a user from anywhere across the world can navigate entirely in his or her native language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify'>Be a part of this historic change! ICANN is calling for volunteers to serve on one of several panels that will define the rules for generating new top-level domain labels for the script or writing systems for their community.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify'><b>Join a Generation Panel today by emailing </b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><a href="mailto:idntlds@icann.org"><b><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>idntlds@icann.org</span></b></a></span><b>. Make sure to tell us the language you speak and the script or writing system you want to get involved with. Please help inform and motivate others to join as well.</b><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify'>The goal of these panels is to support the use of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) by determining what is a valid top-level domain label in each script or writing system. This involves answering three questions: (i) which subset of characters from the various scripts can be used to form a label<a style='mso-footnote-id:ftn1' href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class=MsoFootnoteReference>[1]</span></a>, (ii) which of these characters (if any) may be considered confusable or variants by end users, and (iii) what are additional constraints<a style='mso-footnote-id:ftn2' href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class=MsoFootnoteReference>[2]</span></a> on these labels?<b> </b><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify'>As there is a single Root Zone, all such label generation rules for all the scripts must be merged into a single reference, which is called the Label Generation Rule-set (LGR). The ICANN community has established a <span style='font-size:12.0pt'><a href="https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/lgr-procedure-20mar13-en.pdf"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>procedure</span></a></span> to develop the LGR for the Root Zone. This procedure is divided into three steps:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst style='text-align:justify;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>1.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span><![endif]><span dir=LTR></span>The basis is a subset of Unicode code points which may be appropriate for the Root Zone and called the Maximal Starting Repertoire (MSR).<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle style='text-align:justify;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>2.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span><![endif]><span dir=LTR></span>Communities representing various scripts (e.g., Arabic, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, Chinese, Latin, Thai, etc.) are invited to organize into Generation Panels to start from the MSR and propose the label generation rules (which contains the three types of rules defined above) for their respective scripts.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpLast style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;mso-add-space:auto;text-align:justify;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>3.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span><![endif]><span dir=LTR></span>The script-based proposals developed by the communities are reviewed by a panel of experts called the Integration Panel. Proposals that meet the criteria in the <span style='font-size:12.0pt'><a href="https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/lgr-procedure-20mar13-en.pdf"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>procedure</span></a></span> are integrated into the LGR by the Integration Panel. The LGR is incrementally built upon until it contains all the necessary scripts.<o:p></o:p></p><p style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>For Step 1, ICANN recently released the </span><span style='font-size:14.0pt'><a href="https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2-2014-06-20-en"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Maximal Starting Repertoire (MSR-1)</span></a></span><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>, covering 22 scripts (Arabic, Bengali, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Han, Hangul, Hebrew, Hiragana, Kannada, Katakana, Lao, Latin, Malayalam, Oriya, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu and Thai) and containing 32,790 code points short-listed from 97,973 allowable code points from Unicode version 6.3. Work on additional scripts will be completed soon.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify'>Step 2 is now underway; ICANN needs your help in developing proposals to extend the Root Zone LGR to cover each of these scripts. There is a role for everyone: general script community representation as well as volunteers with knowledge of scripts, linguistics, Unicode, IDNA/DNS or policy.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify'><b>Volunteering is easy; just send an email to </b><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><a href="mailto:idntlds@icann.org"><b><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>idntlds@icann.org</span></b></a></span><b>. Join a Generation Panel today. Help ICANN support top-level domain names in your language!<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify'>With kind regards,<o:p></o:p></p><div style='border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in'><p class=MsoNormal>IDN Program Team<br>ICANN<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoFootnoteText><span class=MsoFootnoteReference>[1]</span> <span style='font-size:8.0pt'>Code points appropriate for labels must be letters and should be in widespread modern use.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoFootnoteText><span class=MsoFootnoteReference>[1]</span> <span style='font-size:8.0pt'>For example, a label cannot be formed entirely by combining marks and must contain at least two letters<span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><br clear=all><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><hr size=1 width="33%" align=left></span></div></div></div><div style='mso-element:footnote-list'><br clear=all><hr align=left size=1 width="33%"><div style='mso-element:footnote' id=ftn1><p class=MsoFootnoteText><a style='mso-footnote-id:ftn1' href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class=MsoFootnoteReference>[1]</span></a> <span style='font-size:8.0pt'>Code points appropriate for labels must be letters and should be in widespread modern use.</span></p></div><div style='mso-element:footnote' id=ftn2><p class=MsoFootnoteText><a style='mso-footnote-id:ftn2' href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class=MsoFootnoteReference>[2]</span></a> <span style='font-size:8.0pt'>For example, a label cannot be formed entirely by combining marks and must contain at least two letters<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></body></html>