In DNS, the domain name has to be ASCII, so unicode characters in the domain name are converted to Punycode and prefixed with xn--. So really, blåhaj.com is really xn--blhaj-nra.com (put that in your browser and watch the name change).
I would imagine that most things would just work, but there would probably be some annoying bugs with different clients who aren’t using libraries which support internationalized domain names, or aren’t expecting them. It’d probably be a good thing to have an internationalized domain name for a popular instance, as that would be a good test case for servers and clients to support that standard.
I’m personally convinced limitations like this are why English is becoming such a dominant language, because the internet and most coding was all designed in English for English, without consideration for other languages. Other languages have to get tacked on with semi-complicated workarounds like this.
Adapting keyboards to non-alphabetic languages for example. Forced Chinese to adopt a romanized way to type things out and learn a new alphabet.
Although they actually eventually became some of the fastest typists on earth thanks to the predictive auto-complete (as I understand it) they adopted decades prior to the rest of the world using it on phones.
blåhaj.com is a thing, why not blåhaj.zone? It’s possible.
In DNS, the domain name has to be ASCII, so unicode characters in the domain name are converted to Punycode and prefixed with
xn--. So really, blåhaj.com is reallyxn--blhaj-nra.com(put that in your browser and watch the name change).I would imagine that most things would just work, but there would probably be some annoying bugs with different clients who aren’t using libraries which support internationalized domain names, or aren’t expecting them. It’d probably be a good thing to have an internationalized domain name for a popular instance, as that would be a good test case for servers and clients to support that standard.
I’m personally convinced limitations like this are why English is becoming such a dominant language, because the internet and most coding was all designed in English for English, without consideration for other languages. Other languages have to get tacked on with semi-complicated workarounds like this.
Cultural imperialism.
Adapting keyboards to non-alphabetic languages for example. Forced Chinese to adopt a romanized way to type things out and learn a new alphabet.
Although they actually eventually became some of the fastest typists on earth thanks to the predictive auto-complete (as I understand it) they adopted decades prior to the rest of the world using it on phones.