Validator and Internationalised Domain Names

Hello,
The W3C Markup Validation Service apparently does not accept
Internationalised Domain Names in its URL field.

It returns an error 500 "Bad hostname" and a message "Sorry! This
document can not be checked".

Currently, the validator transforms the domain part of an URL in
Unicode UTF-8, while the correct transformation of the domain is in
punycode (RFC 3492).

You can find some examples of such Internationalised DNS here:
http://www.w3.org/International/tests/test-idn.html
(My test was with some French characters with accents such as 'é' in a
subdomain)

Another reference of interest:
"An Introduction to Multilingual Web Addresses"
http://www.w3.org/International/articles/idn-and-iri/

All modern browsers I tested (Opera, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox,
Internet Explorer, etc.) support this in their current version.

All the best,
Alexandre
http://alexandre.alapetite.fr