International characters (almost) in URL's

International characters (almost) in URL's

Finally it is possible to use international characters like the danish æ,ø and å, but you need a plugin for your Internet Explorer Browser (sorry - no support for Netscape/Mozilla/Safari yet).

The Internet standard for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) is approaching completion. Currently the final IDN standard is being reviewed by the IETF, the standards organization for core Internet protocols like DNS and email. In anticipation hereof, the registry for .com and .net has – in cooperation with the registries of .jp (Japan) and .kr (Korea) – launched a solution for resolution of your domain names. Unfortunatly the registry for .org has chosen to wait with enabling a solution before the IDN standard has been formally approved.

I have already registrated www.hørup.org, www.hørup.com and www.hørup.net, but only .com and .net is working. It seems like email's is not yet supported - I have tried to mail jens@hørup.com from Outlook and my Squirrelmail, but no succes. The address is rejected and the mail programs claims that the server doesn't exist.

If you don't have the plugin you cannot go to a webdite like www.hørup.com, but the plugin actually converts the site name to a obfuscated URL like http://www.bq--abupq4tvoa.mltbd.com. If you have the plugin, you can actually try to make a mouse over on the obfuscated URL and check in the lower left corner of your browser (if the status bar is on) and see that it shows the correct URL with ø.

By jens @ 17 January, 2003 09:52



Comment

Any idea why mltbd is appended to your domains? It seems a little proprietary. The RACE encoding of hørup.com is bq--abupq4tvoa.com so there should be NS records for bq--abupq4tvoa.com but there isn't. Does Verisign simply create all IDN's as subdomains to mltbd.com?

If this is correct all registrars could create an IDN plugin for their browser and start to create IDN's in their own namespace and still claim to be compliant with the IDN specification created by the IETF

By Jan Chrillesen @ 17 January, 2003 11:09

Comment

I have no idea why they have done it this way. It can be a proprietary way of solving a problem, that should have been solved in the DNS, but until the Internet Standard for Internationalized Domain Names has been finally approved and then later implemented into all DNS (which could take 5-10 years untill all is updated), we do need a in-between solution.

By jens @ 21 January, 2003 11:40


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