Last modified: 2012-05-08 13:55:09 UTC
CJK speakers sometimes hesitate to localise namespaces. A big reason is that it can create a strange configuration of full-width (fw) characters [1] (which applies to most page titles and some namespaces) and half-width (hw) characters (the separator ':'). People rather prefer the sequence of 'XX:○○' (hw-hw-hw-fw-fw) than '○○:○○' (fw-fw-hw-fw-fw) because the former one has only one switch between hw and fw whereas the latter has two. This kind of mixture of character sets can lead to displeasing and unbalanced rendering of the text in pages and URLs containing it, when each character set is assigned with a different font in the user's environment (which is quite common). This problem will be partially solved by having full-width aliases instead of the original namespace separator. For example, if '：' is an alias to ':', then http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/プロジェクト：コンピュータ shall be redirected to http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/プロジェクト:コンピュータ allowing a wiki to use the former one when the community prefers it. (プロジェクト literally translates to 'Project' and コンピュータ translates to 'Computer') I believe this option will motivate further localisation of namespaces in CJK languages, if implemented. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfwidth_and_fullwidth_forms
