Posted by Marcus Bointon on 05/16/05 11:56

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@synchromedia.co.uk | http://www.synchromedia.co.uk

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