URIs and i18n

Hi,

I am currently writing a webapp which has URIs of the form
http://example.org/users/fran-ois.berl-and where fran-ois is a first
name, berl-and a family name and '-' replaces non-ASCII characters. So
fran-ois.berl-and could represent someone named François Berléand.

Now, I would like to have more "beautiful" URIs, like
http://example.org/users/francois.berleand.

I am wondering if there's a standard or something defining how to
"translate" non-ASCII characters to ASCII ones, be they French special
chars, Japanese ones or anything else.

If not, is it wise to try to do such a transcription? I don't know if
that makes a difference but the tool will be targeted at
English-speaking people (but the names can be from any culture).

Another possibility would be to use IRIs, but most people would end-up
having difficulties typing them and that would make them harder to remember.

Finally, I could let users choose their ASCII-only URI. I think that's
what I'm going to do as it's easier for me and the least likely to
offend people, but I would have liked to get your feedback on this topic.

Thanks,
Jean-Gui

Received on Monday, 28 July 2008 18:03:58 UTC