google Non-Latin characters in domain names could break the internet ... - Multilingu

[A D]

Non-Latin characters in domain names could break the internet ...
Multilingual Search, UK - 20 hours ago
... coming under ?signficant politicial pressure? at a recent UN Athens conference to allow non-Latin standard characters to be used in domain names. ...


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[bwhhisc]

Adding 50,000 unique foreign language symbols and scripts to the root of the DNS would certainly be quite a challenge.

This is a "what if" hypothesis, and he is probably right that it would screw up the works.

That is exactly why the International Domain Name system was developed to fit into the exisiting system. Punycode allows all 50,000 plus symbols and letters of the various international languages to convert to the 37 latin symbols (a-z, hyphen-, 0-9). No brick changing needed in the DNS root.

With IE7, Firefox, Opera etc you only need to enter the unicode (text word in any language) and it will automatically convert to punycode and take you to the correct international website. Those that have downloaded IE7 can try out IDNs and see how efficiently the system (nearly a decade in the making) really does work.

 

[Rubber Duck]

Only if they have already installed the correct language fonts into their OS, otherwise they will just see little white boxes and wonder what the hell is going on. Don't forget that all those that form part of the target market will have their PCs delivered with these fonts installed, so the fact that they might be missing on your machine means nothing in terms of market adoption.