Re: [idn] URL encoding in html page

["J. William Semich" <bill@mail.nic.nu>]

For anyone on the list who would like to see how Verisign's ML.com domain 
name registrations can work right now in a lightweight URL-based system 
(which is what most users want right now anyway - not "domain names") using 
any local, UTF8 or ACE encoding, I've set up a demonstration of all of the 
multilingual domain names registered by Verisign under <ml>.com up until 
Nov., 2001, which currently resolve as bq--??.mltbd.com in the Verisign 
name servers. These will all work as ML URLs under the .com.nu domain.

So the domain name alingsås.com, which was registered by Register.com for 
one of its customers, and which currently resolves as the ACE domain name 
bq--abqwy2lom5z6k4y.mltbd.com to the Register.com "parked" page, will also 
resolve to the same parked page if the URL http://alingsås.com.nu/ is used, 
whether that URL is encoded as UTF-8 UNICODE or ISO-8859-1. The same holds 
true for the domain name l’esprit.com  which was registered for a customer 
by WorldNames and which points to the WorldNames parked page either as
bq--ed7wygp7mx7xh73q75zp62p7oq.mltbd.com  or as http://l’esprit.com.nu/.

Also try the NetSol customer's URL, http://wörterbuch.com.nu/ . I'm not 
reproducing any Asian, Arabic or similar URLs here for obvious reasons, but 
anyone on the list who knows of an Asian, etc., <ml>.com domain name that 
was registered before November, 2001, should feel free to test the system 
using any local encoding as the URL (not just ACE and not just UTF-8). Note 
that the RealNames/Microsoft "error" based search tool does not get into 
the act with these URLs, since there's no error for it to respond to.

These also all will work for hypertext links on a Web page, using local 
language encoding or UTF-8, and can also be saved as "favorites" in IE.

Bill Semich
.NU Domain