ICANN Explores India’s Pioneering Work on IDNs

ICANN NEW DELHI , INDIA :
The Indian experience with Internationalized Domain Names and possible
lessons for global implementation of IDNs will be front and center at a
workshop at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
31st International Public Meeting slated for 13 February 2008 at 11 am
local time.

“ICANN’s IDN program is about making close to 100,000 characters
from the languages of the world available at the top level – the part
after the dot — so users can benefit from a domain name in fully
localized language or script,” said Tina Dam, ICANN’s IDN Program
Director. ” India has 22 official languages and has done a great deal
of foundation work on how languages and scripts – or the collection of
characters used in a language – can be categorized and used. There are
a lot of lessons for the world coming out of the work being done in
India.”

Because different languages can share similar characters and
scripts, there are numerous technical and policy issues on how they
would be handled and used in domain names. Much work has been done on
this in India.

The IDNs in Indian Languages and Scripts workshop will cover the following topics:

  • An Introduction To Indian Languages, and Scripts
  • Development of Language Tables, Policy Issues for Indic Scripts
  • Indian Languages in Computer Applications
  • Status of Indian Language Deployment in Operating Systems
  • Status of Indian Language Deployments in Computer Applications

“As ICANN moves forward to making the scripts and languages of the
world available in all levels of domain names, the work being done in
India, and the lessons learned, willl make an immeasurable contribution
to the people of the world being able to get their name in their
language for their Internet,” Dam said.

http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-12feb08.htm


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