On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:02 AM, Christopher Fynn <[email protected]> wrote: > Do the folded domain names get displayed? > If so, doesn't this have the potential to break some rendering > systems?
I don't fully understand you. As I pointed out, the folding is purely an internal thing done during the search for duplicate domain names. The folding will not change the domain name itself. (Possibly in this way it is different from the case folding where all domain names when registered fold to lowercase and are registered as a sequence of lowercase characters if I am not mistaken.) Anyway, this confusable folding as I understand it is much like the case folding that is done when you are doing text-insensitive search. The text in the input field of the search box is not changed, and neither is the text in the document, but it is only that they are considered equivalent because the internal processing of the search command folds them to a uniform representation. So if at all folding produces mixed script text, such mixed script text will exist purely as a character stream in the internal processing of the registrar's server where the server searches for an already existing domain name that folds to the same character stream. It will never be displayed. It is only used to determine whether the server should respond "Hey there is already a name that is confusable with this so I can't let you register this domain name you are asking for" or it should go ahead with registering the requested domain name. As for the requested domain name itself, it is unlikely to intentionally contain a mixed-script text, so long as the requester is not intending to create a phishing website spoofing some other legitimate domain name! As somebody pointed out already, legitimate domain names are expected to have all their characters in the same script (but that's a "should" instead of a "must" it seems). Anyhow, when you are registering a legitimate domain name, you are unlikely to chooes a sequence of characters that leads to bad rendering... The server itself will register the domain name (if available and not a confusable with a pre-existing name) with the exact characters you requested, so that should not be a problem. (If anybody more technically knowledgeable than me finds fault with any of this, please do correct. I am by profession NOT a domain name registrar or web-IT specialist.) Shriramana.
