If web pages can be written in non-Latin alphabets, why can’t domain names be as well? Ari-Pekka Launne looks at the challenges of internationalising domain names.
If web pages can be written in non-Latin alphabets, why can’t domain names be as well? Ari-Pekka Launne looks at the challenges of internationalising domain names.Domain names are normally combinations of ASCII characters. ASCII script replicates the 26 characters of the standard Latin alphabet and the numerals 0 to 9.
Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are domain names that contain local languagespecific characters. Such domain names can contain letters or characters from non-ASCII scripts (for example, Arabic or Chinese). The Internet community continues its endeavours to make domain names available in character sets other than ASCII. In future, more and more people will be able to use the Internet fully in their own language.
The internationalising of domain names is not a task that can be completed by just a snap of the fingers. There are technical issues and political issues to overcome. It should also be noted that there are some negatives to the project.
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idns, cctlds, latin
