RE: 2nd draft. Re: IDN - 'Does it work?' draft.

Hi Mick,
 
This looks good.  I have some editorial suggestions, but I'll hold off on those for now since you said you wanted to do some editorial changes too.
 
It would be good, however, to include information about at least one Mac browser, eg. Safari.  Are you able to do that?
 
Cheers,
RI
 
============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
 
HYPERLINK "http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/"http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
HYPERLINK "http://www.w3.org/International/"http://www.w3.org/International/
HYPERLINK "http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/"http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
HYPERLINK "http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/"http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
 
 


   _____  

From: public-i18n-core-request@w3.org [mailto:public-i18n-core-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Michael Monaghan
Sent: 29 January 2007 20:37
To: Felix Sasaki
Cc: public-i18n-core@w3.org; Mark Davis
Subject: 2nd draft. Re: IDN - 'Does it work?' draft.



Domain Names.

Numerous domain name authorities already offer internationalized domain names. These include providers for such large domains as .cn, .jp, .kr, and many more.

One of the problems associated with IDN support in browsers is that it can facilitate phishing. Consequently, most browsers that support IDN also put in place some safeguards to protect users from such fraud.
Another problem is that Internet Explorer 6, with its huge market share, does not natively support IDN [though HYPERLINK "http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=842848"plugins are available]. However, IE7, which does support IDN, will, over time, replace most IE6 installs.

Note, that as a temporary fallback solution, until IDN is more widely supported, content authors who want to point to a resource using an IDN can write the link text in native characters, but put a punycode representation in the href attribute. Though not an ideal solution, it would guarantee that the user would be able to link to the resource, whatever platform they used.

You can run a basic check to see whether it works on your system using this HYPERLINK "http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-idn-1"simple test.

Here's a look at how some browsers support IDN: 

1. Internet Explorer 7 


* Looks at the languages selected in the browser preferences, and from that deduces a set of scripts for which to fully enable IDN 

* If ASCII is mixed with any one of the following scripts, the URL is displayed in Unicode [provided the appropriate browser language preferences have been set]:



* Arab (Arabic) 

* Bali (Balinese) 

* Beng (Bengali) 

* Bugi (Buginese) 

* Deva (Devanagari) 

* Ethi (Ethiopic) 

* Gujr (Gujarati) 

* Guru (Gurmukhi) 

* Hang (Hangul) 

* Hani (Han) 

* Hebr (Hebrew) 

* Hira (Hiragana) 

* Kana (Katakana) 

* Khmr (Khmer) 

* Knda (Kannada) 

* Laoo (Lao) 

* Mlym (Malayalam) 

* Mong (Mongolian) 

* Mymr (Myanmar) 

* Orya (Oriya) 

* Sinh (Sinhala) 

* Syrc (Syriac) 

* Taml (Tamil) 

* Telu (Telugu) 

* Thaa (Thaana) 

* Thai (Thai) 

* Tibt (Tibetan) 


* Uses punycode to display a domain name if any one of the following conditions is met: 


* The domain name contains characters which are not a part of any script 

* A single domain label mixes characters that are not contained in any single script [except when mixing ASCII and one of the above HYPERLINK \l "ie7scripts"scripts] 

* The domain name contains a character from a language not included in the user's language preferences 

* If punycode is displayed, then so is the yellow Information Bar 

* Allows IDN disabling 

* Uses an icon at the end of the address bar to notify you when an URL contains a non-ASCII character 

2. Internet Explorer 6 


* By default does not support IDN at all 

* 3rd party HYPERLINK "http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=842848"plugins are available which provide IDN support 

3. Firefox 2.x 


* Handles IDNs mainly based on the URLs top-level-domain [TLD - .com, .de, .jp etc.] 

* Some TLDs are trusted, while others are not. IDNs within trusted TLDs are displayed properly, while those not within trusted TLDs are displayed as punycode 

* IDN support can be switched off entirely by setting the network.enableIDN preference to false, in the about:config page 

* IDNs that contain particular characters [e.g. fraction-slash], even within trusted TLDs, are treated suspiciously, and are displayed as punycode 

* See HYPERLINK "http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/tld-idn-policy-list.html"Mozilla.org's policy on IDN-enabled TLDs 

4. Mozilla 1.7x 


* Supports IDN 

* Displays all IDN URLs as punycode 

* IDN support can be switched off entirely by setting the network.enableIDN preference to false, in the about:config page 

5. Opera 9.1 


* Supports IDN 

* Uses a whitelist of TLDs for which to allow proper display of IDNs 

* However, even for some trusted TLDs, it will still display IDNs as punycode, if any label mixes certain scripts 

* Opera's list of illegal characters is slightly longer than the official IDNA list. Some IDNs, while displayed as punycode in other browsers, are entirely illegal in Opera 

Examples:

URL  IE 7 
 Firefox 2.x
 Opera 9.1 
 
HYPERLINK "http://www.þorn.is"www.þorn.is  HYPERLINK "http://www.þorn.is"www.þorn.is  HYPERLINK "http://www.þorn.is/"www.þorn.is  HYPERLINK "http://www.þorn.is/"www.þorn.is 
HYPERLINK "http://bäcker.com"bäcker.com  HYPERLINK "http://xn--bcker-gra.com/"bäcker.com/  HYPERLINK "http://xn--bcker-gra.com/"xn--bcker-gra.com/   HYPERLINK "http://xn--bcker-gra.com/"bäcker.com/ 
HYPERLINK "http://путин.museum"путин.museum  HYPERLINK "http://путин.museum"путин.museum  HYPERLINK "http://путин.museum/"путин.museum   HYPERLINK "http://путин.museum/"путин.museum 
HYPERLINK "http://I♥NY.museum"I♥NY.museum  HYPERLINK "http://xn--iny-zx5a.museum/"xn--iny-zx5a.museum/  HYPERLINK "http://i♥ny.museum/"i♥ny.museum/   HYPERLINK "http://i♥ny.museum/"i♥ny.museum/ 
HYPERLINK "http://pаypal.museum"pаypal.museum  HYPERLINK "http://xn--pypal-4ve.museum/"xn--pypal-4ve.museum/  HYPERLINK "http://pаypal.museum/"pаypal.museum/   HYPERLINK "http://pаypal.museum/"pаypal.museum/ 
HYPERLINK "http://ibm.com/foo.museum"ibm.com⁄foo.museum  HYPERLINK "http://ibm.xn--comfoo-rq0c.museum"ibm.xn--comfoo-rq0c.museum  HYPERLINK "http://ibm.xn--comfoo-rq0c.museum/"ibm.xn--comfoo-rq0c.museum/  Illegal - Opera does not 
allow the fraction-slash 
character in URLs at all.
 
HYPERLINK "http://??ã.jp/"ップã.jp  HYPERLINK "http://xn--3ca526vzba.jp/"xn--3ca526vzba.jp/
 HYPERLINK "http://??ã.jp/"ップã.jp/
 HYPERLINK "http://??ã.jp/"ップã.jp/ 
HYPERLINK "http://??ã.co.uk/"ップã.co.uk  HYPERLINK "http://xn--3ca526vzba.co.uk/"xn--3ca526vzba.co.uk
 HYPERLINK "http://xn--3ca526vzba.co.uk"xn--3ca526vzba.co.uk
 HYPERLINK "http://??ã.co.uk/"ップã.co.uk/ 
HYPERLINK "http://??ã?.jp/"ップãп.jp/
 HYPERLINK "http://xn--3ca43o0y0dkca.jp/"xn--3ca43o0y0dkca.jp/
 HYPERLINK "http://??ã?.jp/"ップãп.jp/
 HYPERLINK "http://??ã?.jp/"ップãп.jp/
 
HYPERLINK "http://??ã?.co.uk"ップãп.co.uk
 HYPERLINK "http://xn--3ca43o0y0dkca.co.uk/"xn--3ca43o0y0dkca.co.uk/
 HYPERLINK "http://xn--3ca43o0y0dkca.co.uk/"xn--3ca43o0y0dkca.co.uk/
 HYPERLINK "http://xn--3ca43o0y0dkca.co.uk/"xn--3ca43o0y0dkca.co.uk/ 

Note: For an explanation of a browser's behavior for a particular IDN, please 'mouseover' the text in the browser's column.


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