Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

ICANN Approves Non-Latin ccTLDs

Posted by kdawson on from the here-comes-everybody dept.

Several readers including alphadogg tipped the news that ICANN has approved non-Latin ccTLDs at its meeting in Seoul. "Starting in mid-November, countries and territories will be able to apply to show domain names in their native language, a major technical tweak to the Internet designed to increase language accessibility. On Friday, the Internet's addressing authority approved a Fast-Track Process for applying for an IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) and will begin accepting applications on Nov. 16. The move comes after years of technical testing and policy development... Currently, domain names can only be displayed using the Latin alphabet letters A-Z, the digits 0-9 and the hyphen, but in future countries will be able to display country-code Top Level Domains (cc TLDs) in their native language. ... 'The usability of IDNs may be limited, as not all application software is capable of working with IDNs,' ICANN said in a 59-page proposal (PDF) dated Sept. 30 that describes the [application] process." Reader dhermann adds, "Great, now even less chance I can identify NSFW links before they are blocked by my work's big brother app and my boss is notified... again."

2 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Encoding? by DamonHD · · Score: 5, Informative

    To avoid breaking all the DNS-related code out there that assumes (ie correctly, based on the current spec) only alphanumerics and '-' in each component.

    If you wish to rewrite every single bit of DNS-dependent code, in every laptop, server, embedded network device, etc, etc, ... well assume that it can't be done, and with this mechanism it doesn't need to be. Though I bet a few bits of code will barf at the '--' anyhow...

    Rgds

    Damon

    --
    http://m.earth.org.uk/
  2. Re:And the answer to that... by Looce · · Score: 4, Informative

    You don't understand. Punycode is how second-level domains are already implemented, even on top of relatively old browsers. This is an extension of Punycode to be usable in the TLD as well.

    In other words, your current version of Firefox will be able to visit pages in IDN TLDs when they're implemented, and so if someone does create a .örg TLD today, you can go to www.anysite.örg to your heart's content already.

    Note that this doesn't mean you can go to www.anysite.örg in NCSA Mosaic or anything, because these old browsers were around when Punycode wasn't even a standard. You can go to www.anysite.xn--rg-eka and NCSA Mosaic will recognise that, though. The seamless IDN TLD usage is just going to be present in the more modern browsers. I expect that Opera 8+, IE 6+, Firefox 2+ and recent Safari/Konqueror/Epiphany are going to be able to visit www.anysite.örg and 'hide' the xn--etc- access details from you, the user.

    Happy surfing!