A question to (net) geeks

[karohemd]

I just read on a German news site that from 1st March 04 domain names will be able to contain a number of extended characters (accented characters, Umlauts etc.).
How can they get this to work?

Comments

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Certain extended characters are in the standard ASCII set and will probably be the ones allowed.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

*nods*
Then it makes sense that Umlauts are allowed but ß isn't.

[mattp.livejournal.com]

RFCs 3490, 3491 and 3492 contain the gory details.

If I've understood it properly then the following summary applies:
All conversion is done within applications, rather than between applications.

International domains will have two forms - a converted "legacy" form (e.g. that which is sent to DNS servers (and presumably the records which would be in zone files, though this need not be the case)) and the "presentation" form (that which appears in email addresses, in the URL bar of web browsers, on business cards etc.

Anyway, that's what I've gleamed from a 10 minute scan through those RFCs. I'll have a closer look whem I'm less tired.

Fun reading though - thanks for provoking my interest.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Aha. I knew I could rely on my friends. :o)

The only problem I see with this (and most likely the reason why the didn't do it in the first place) is for non-english sites: Let's say a company with an accented character in their name decides to change their domain name. People in their country won't have a problem but others who don't have the relevant characters on their standard keyboard layout (and who don't know how to get extended chars) will.