On 14 May 2005, at 07:53, Richard Lynch wrote:
For the record, no I haven't tried to go to that URL, because I don't even
know how to type that symbol.
Ah. I don't think you use a Mac ;^) MacOS (9 and X) has a wonderful system for typing any accented characters very easily (from an English keyboard) that can be explained and easily remembered in about 10 seconds. One simple technique enables me to type áéíóúäëïöüàèìòùöâêîôûñõ without having to remember large numbers of keystrokes or codes.
If I did know how to type that non-ASCII symbol, I don't quite understand
which of the umpteen "extended" character sets is going to get used by all
the DNS machines, so I'd be kind of surprised if it worked, but, hey, if
it all works and everybody is happy, it's all good.
It's easy - it's all unicode mapped into ASCII so it works transparently with DNS systems, who don't have to think in anything other than plain ASCII. It's up to individual applications to map the presentational aspect - raw mappings will work in all applications - try going to www.xn--caf-dma.com (the punycode rendering of www.café.com).
I feel sorry for anybody who has such a domain name, however, as it's
going to be a real bear to get it listed/indexed correctly by search
engines, I would guess. Maybe not. Maybe all the search engines are all
ready for the non-ASCII domain names. [shrug]
I certainly understand that the DNS space is now much bigger, and much
nicer for non-English (or, perhaps more accurately,
non-ASCII/Roman-alphabet) websites who can now get their domain name in
their own native language. And I think that's really great.
But it's sure gonna make it hard for a lot of users to figure out how to
get there...
Bear in mind that in languages that DO make use of accented (or just plain different) characters, they are utterly normal and everyday. Someone who considers "cafe" to be misspelled relative to "café" will find it EASIER to use the correct version than to have to translate into the English "dumbing down" of their language - that you might find it harder is not a consideration.
Marcus -- Marcus Bointon Synchromedia Limited: Putting you in the picture marcus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | http://www.synchromedia.co.uk
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