Would like URL to show utf-8 (unicode) domain name not punycode

I believe this may be an Apache configuration?

[voltrader]

I have an International Domain Name (IDN) that resolves correctly to the correct website, however, the URL turns into punycode (xn--blahblah.com) when the page loads.

I would like the IDN to remain in native characters in the URL.

I've looked around the web and think this may be an apache configuration issue.

Has anyone dealt with this before?

[encyclo]

Please note that I'm not an expert on this, but I believe the current situation is that Internet Explorer 6 does not support IDNs (only punycode versions) without a third-party plugin [support.microsoft.com], and implementations in other browsers have been hampered by homograph spoofing problems - I don't know about Firefox 1.5 but I believe Firefox 1.07 has IDNs disabled.

Until UA support becomes more widespread (and there are a great many companies working hard on this problem including Microsoft) then the use of IDNs are limited.

As we are in the Apache forum, you might be interested in the mod_fileiri module:

[w3.org...]

Most of the little I know comes from this article:

An Introduction to Multilingual Web Addresses [w3.org]

[voltrader]

Thanks Cyclo.

I'm using Firefox which does have IDN enabled. IDN use is gaining momentum, with many foreign sites using IDN as their primary address - which makes sense.

Do an inurl: for any common foreign term in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Korean, and you'll find at least thousands, if not tens of thousands of sites using IDN.

IE7 will have IDN resolution enabled by default.

You're right about IE6 not being able to resolve IDN without the Verisign plug-in. It's Microsoft... what can you say?

I've done more checking around and it appears that the unicode/punycode inconsistency in the URL may be a Firefox bug.

Will post again when I have more info.