ICANN to test foreign language top-level domains

[mandy]

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the US organisation which regulates the use of .com, .net and .org top level domains (TLDs), has outlined a plan to test TLDs using foreign language characters, also known as internationalised domain names (IDNs).

When the domain name system was first developed, it used only the Latin alphabet, plus additional characters such as hyphens. As the internet has expanded, many users, especially those in Arabic and Asian countries, have expressed an interest in having TLDs in their native languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...

full article: http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=14180

[regic]

Bah! 

PITA (for me) ! 

[jezebel]

Pro-It's long overdue and will encourage participation in the global economy. 
Con-You'll need to hire a translator to understand your damn log files.  :angry017:

[mandy]

A related article on IDNs:

Plans to fast-track the introduction of non-English characters in website domain names could "break the whole internet", warns ICANN chief executive Paul Twomey.

To date, website names can only be registered using Latin characters, which effectively alienates countries using Arabic, Chinese and other foreign letters from registering internet addresses in their native tongue...

"The internet is like a fifteen story building, and with international domain names what we're trying to do is change the bricks in the basement," he said.

"If we change the bricks there's all these layers of code above the DNS ... we have to make sure that if we change the system, the rest is all going to work."...

full article: http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/web-chief...92720.html

[mandy]

A good primer on IDNs:

To many in the English speaking world, we take our alphabet for granted. The Latin alphabet as used in English is relatively straightforward: 26 letters a through z. Conveniently, these 26 letters, the hyphen “-“ and Arabic numerals 0 through 9 constitute the acceptable characters for a domain name.

To much of the world this is not nearly as intuitive. While the Latin alphabet is the most widely used, 3 other alphabets are used in large portions of the world. The Cyrillic alphabet is spread through Russia, parts of Eastern Europe and former republics of the Soviet Union. The Arabic alphabet spans from Northern Africa through the Middle East and the Brahmic-derived alphabets of Southeast Asia. Throw in the accents, diacritics and ligatures seen in various languages using the Latin alphabet, and the possible combinations become staggering...

full article: http://www.dailydomainer.com/2007161-idn...names.html