From: Arlen Christian Mart Cuss <celtic@...>
Date: 2007-09-26T23:33:23+09:00
Subject: Re: How to parse a unicode url?


> I thought this might be the case. However, typing the following into 
> firefox gets me a real live page (after trying a few random domains)
> 
> http://www.h旦ren.at/
> 
> Hmmm...


That's because Firefox automatically translates into the equivalent IDN;
attempting to lookup the domain www.h旦ren.at (or h旦ren.at) gives
NXDOMAIN - it will never work. www.h旦ren.at is translated into the
punycode name www.xn--hren-5qa.at. Try visiting that in Firefox - it
actually rewrote the URL as www.h旦ren.at for me, but rest assured the
domain is one and the same.

7 bit ASCII is to be used in domain names only; please use IDN to
represent international characters, as it's the accepted way to do it,
and implemented as you see in Firefox.

Cheers.

Arlen