At 8:37 PM +0100 8/30/08, Diogo Neves wrote:
Well, i really really believe that urls should keep clear as water...
http://forcaaerea.pt should exist, and not http://forçaaérea.pt...
even because in reality its http://xn--foraarea-u0aw.pt
Its a big mess...
How to keep it clear? don't mess up with your domains if you care
about your clients
What if your client is Chinese? Are you saying
that they shouldn't have a domain name in their
own language?
When you say:
http://forcaaerea.pt should exist, and not http://forçaaérea.pt...
even because in reality its http://xn--foraarea-u0aw.pt
That's not true -- but the reverse is.
<In general terms>
What you see above and what you claim to be
"reality" is actually PUNYCODE -- that is NOT
what the url actually is.
You see, the Internet was originally
founded/based on 7-bit character transmission (a
carry-over from older communications). That meant
that only ASCII (with a 127 character limit)
could be used in an URL. Unfortunately, only 4
percent of the world's population uses ASCII as
the foundation for their respective language.
Something needed to be done to correct this.
So, circa 1999, the IDNS WG (of which I lurked --
I provide nothing on any value) was assigned the
problem of finding a solution. That solution
ultimately became PUNYCODE, before that was RACE
and before that AMC and before that something
that don't remember at this moment.
PUNYCODE is an algorithm that takes Unicode code
points and translates them into an ASCII string
(i.e., xn--) so that string can be used in URL's.
PUNYCODE was never meant to be seen by the end
user.
The concept was that browsers were supposed to
translate PUNYCODE back into the code-points they
represented so the end user would be able to see
their domains in their native language -- not
leave them as PUNYCODE as they are now for some
browsers. However, other browsers do get it right
-- Safari, Opera for example.
So, your "clear as water" statement is fine
provided that ASCII is the charset (character
building blocks) of your native language -- if
not, then ASCII is certainly not as "clear as
water" for everyone else, which is the remaining
96 percent of the world's population.
</In general terms>
Cheers,
tedd
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