IDN Variant Issues Project
Arabic Case Study Team
Conference Call
Monday 4 July, 2011 – 06:00-07:30 UTC 

Present on the call: 
Sarmad Hussein, Raed Al-Fayez, Manal Ismail, Huda Sarfraz, Behnam Esfahbod

ICANN staff/consultants: Baher Esmat, Andrew Sullivan

We discussed the agenda which was circulated see below (but could not get through due to some emailing issues, but was later emailed to all participants on the call).  
 
The discussion focused on Agenda 1 for most of the call, and the overall categories were increased to include the following:
 
-variants
-TLD delegation
-DNSSEC
-Registry operations
-Dispute resolution
-IPv6
 
The first item, “variants” were discussed in more details, as elaborated in A.1.1 –A1.3 below.  
 
A1.1.1 Unicode code points having same shape in at least one of the four forms (beginning, middle, final and isolated)  - this was agreed
A1.1.2 composed and decomposed forms not covered through Unicode which are exactly same- this was agreed
 
A1.2.1 Unicode code points have shape similar enough that user will get confused and accept them equal (causing security threat, e.g. phishing)
A1.2.1.1 similar shapes- this was agreed
A1.2.1.2 similar marks 
 
A1.2.1.2 (similar marks) was subdivided into two categories: dots/marks and Hamza/madda/etc. for further consideration, instead of including this as A1.3.2.
 
A1.2.2 composed and decomposed forms same enough to cause user confusion (causing security threat, e.g. phishing) - this was agreed
 
A1.3.1 conflating level 2 marks (less significance, higher optionality)  (e.g. fatha) 
A1.3.2 conflating level 1 marks  (higher significance, lower optionality) (e.g. hamza above/below)
A1.3.3 conflating level 0(?) marks  (highest significance, no optionality) (e.g. double-fatha) (could this be A 2.1?)
 
A1.3.2 was to be moved into similar marks category.  
 
From Arabic language point of view, A1.3.1 and A1.3.3 may be equally optional, though that is not the case for Urdu.  
 
It was suggested that the following sub-categories may be developed for Arabic language:
 
-Fatha/damma/kasra/etc.
-dammatan/etc.
-shadda
 
A similar strategy could be looked at for other languages to finalie the sub-categorization.
 
It was also suggested that all the PVALID Unicode code points be revisited to see if there any which may not be used – this should be looked at in the context of the current work for variants.
 
This discussion will continue through further calls and email.
--------------------
 
It was also decided that we will hold weekly meetings to get the work started and get the requisite momentum in the start.  
 
Baher is requested to circulate another Doodle soon for schedule of weekly meeting.  There will be a single doodle to set same time and day for the rest of the meetings during morning times from M-W.  
 
Remaining agenda will be followed up in future calls.
 
Baher will also circulate the recording of the meeting today.