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ICANN Approves .IRAN (in Non-Latin)
penciling_in writes "CircleID reports that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced its approval of non-Latin string evaluation of 'Iran.' This approval will allow the availability of Iran's top-level domain in its own native language, Persian, also known as Farsi (that is, the domain name .IRAN, in non-Latin characters). According to ICANN, there are currently 33 requests for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs), representing 22 languages, out of which 18 countries/territories have so far been approved."
Our computers support it, but slashdot doesn't.
It's here:
http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion-i-en.htm#ir
No image, though. You will need a browser that supports the characters.
An example is several levels deep in the links:
http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion-i-en.htm#ir
You'll need browser/os support for the unicode glyphs in order to see it (Firefox on Windows works for me.)
Other countries are there too, like India, China, Egypt, etc.
Iran, Islamic Republic of. ccTLDs: xn--mgba3a4f16a, xn--mgba3a4fra.
The Unicode whitelist on Slashdot is preventing us from having the Farsi reading, so see here.
FYI: Persian alphabet is derived from, and looks similar to, the Arabic script but the written languages are certainly distinguishable. Being able to distinguish might require some expertise -- I can't do it anyway. Also, the Persian (or Perso-Arabic) script is used by many other languages.
Wikipedia knows these things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perso-Arabic_script
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet