فلسطين. top-level domain representing the Occupied Palestinian Territory

http://www.iana.org/reports/2010/falasteen-report-16jul2010.html

by matant • 14 years ago

138 67 14 years ago

jlgreco• 14 years ago

My impression is that all the major browsers show these links as punycode for security reasons. What is the point of these then? Is punycode defaulted to "off" in some countries? Wouldn't that just create two classes of users, one more vulnerable to phishing than the other?

ConstantineXVI• 14 years ago

Logically, one would think your native language's script would automatically get "whitelisted" and rendered properly, while everything else is punycoded as usual.

kijeda• 14 years ago

That is not correct. For example, Mozilla takes a white list approach where they add TLDs that have registration policies that limit the risk of phishing (which is most of them).

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/tld-idn-policy-list...

Cushman6• 14 years ago

It looks like if you add Arabic as a language in Chrome, domains aren't converted. (And actually it will change http://xn--ggblala6cyf.xn--wgbh1c/ to ستفتاء.مصر in the address bar.)

TazeTSchnitzel4• 14 years ago

Makes sense. If your language isn't Arabic, you may be unable to, for instance, write the website address down.

mahmud• 14 years ago

I can confirm this. Arabic TLDs and hostnames stay Arabic for me.

Cushman6• 14 years ago

It's interesting that the Arabic TLDs aren't abbreviated the way Latin and semi-Latin (.рф) country codes are. I wonder if that's reflective of anything besides that abbreviation of words is not as common in written Arabic.

talbina• 14 years ago

That is correct, there are no abbreviations in the Arabic language.

TazeTSchnitzel4• 14 years ago

Arabic hasn't "modernised" in quite the same way many western languages have, which makes it quite interesting. Since it has stayed a written-only language for quite some time, the letters were not broken up, and its joined-up form has stayed into the digital age (at least, I assume this is why)

Cushman6• 14 years ago

My understanding is that there are a handful in common use, but the process is not productive as it is in most Latinate languages.

abdulhaq• 14 years ago

I think that's not strictly true, what about الخ meaning الى اّخره (i.e. to the end of it, meaning "etc".). In some books ح can mean حديث. But generally it is very rare.

lunchbox• 14 years ago

It must depend on your definition of "abbreviation". For example, Hamas and Fatah (the main political parties in Palestine) are both acronyms. Fatah is actually a reverse acronym.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Etymology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah#Etymology

hasenj3• 14 years ago

One thing about abbreviations in Arabic is they will be read as a word, not as distinct letters. In English, "http" can't be read as a word, you always read it as "ech-tee-tee-pee". "etc" is not read "etk" but read as "ee-tee-see". Where as in arabic, "الخ" is read as one word "ilkh" instead of as letters "alif-lam-kha".

So, to abbreviate words, you have to think hard about how people will read it. For instance, someone mentioned in another reply "Hamas" and "Fatah". Both these abbreviations read nicely as other words with related meanings. But, how would one abbreviate "Filisteen"?

If you choose the first three letters "Filis", well, that reads like "penny" and is generally used to refer to cheap things - you don't want to use that.

If you use "ft", that would read as "FiTT" فط which just sounds awful in Arabic. (it's not like "fit", the "t" here is heavy/strong).

Actually, "filisteen" is already bad enough: it sounds like "filis" + "TTeen" which is "penny" + "dirt" (we used to make fun of this when we were kids). Though in Palestinian (and the Levant region in general) they pronounce it "falasteen", not "filisteen".

mkhalil2• 14 years ago

Cool beans. Glad to see IANA recognizing it. Hopefully the US Gov won't pull all there funding. </political joke>

ars2• 14 years ago

A bigger question is if the two factions (Fatah and Hamas) will fight over control of this TLD.

effinjames• 14 years ago

is it a weapon of mass destruction?

gadders• 14 years ago

If the domain is just for the occupied territories, than Gaza (and Hamas) will get a different domain.

mkhalil2• 14 years ago

Lately they have been getting along pretty well and have reconciled, but this has made Israel really angry.

taylorfausak• 14 years ago

This TLD messes up HN's title: "top-level domain representing the Occupied Palestinian Territory | Hacker News .فلسطين" I assume this is because Arabic is right-to-left, but it's interesting that only the title is affected.

Edit: This affects Mobile Safari on an iPad (iOS 5.1.1).

nightpool• 14 years ago

Works fine for me. (Firefox 18.0a1 Windows XP)

mratzloff• 14 years ago

It appears to be a bug in Safari in general. I see it on 6.0.

jdpage• 14 years ago

It displays correctly in the Firefox content and UI (17.0a2, yes I am behind), but incorrectly in the OSX title bar.

shrikant• 14 years ago

Displays correctly in FF 17 / Ubuntu 12.04, but only when Firefox is windowed. When maximised, the Unity bar takes over and I see the same bug you're seeing.

ars2• 14 years ago

Will this become a trend and other countries will start registering TLD's in their native language?

Even if they use latin script, the name of the country is not always written the same in it's own language vs in English.

MartinCron2• 14 years ago

This is already happening. The TLD for Spain is .es

adlpz• 14 years ago

Also Germany (.de), Switzerland (.ch), Croatia (.hr), and several more. It's quite common. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_doma...

jtreminio• 14 years ago

I don't think it's "es" for "español (Spaniards don't speak Spanish), it's "es" for "España".

antman• 14 years ago

I think you mean in their native character set, rather than native language

beagle3• 14 years ago

That's just ISO country codes.

IE is IrEland because IR is IRan, and Iran comes before Ireland alphabetically.

azernik• 14 years ago

The creation of non-Latin-script TLDs has been going on for about 3 years now - see this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom...

tkahn6• 14 years ago

FYI, this article is 2 years old.

mark_l_watson• 14 years ago

Why not? The web is supposed to be open and letting all countries have whatever TLD(s) they want makes sense.

The fact that some browsers may have font problems, etc. makes me think that countries might want to also have a secondary TLD in latin text. Perhaps they could be mapped to the same domain? I would think that a lot of countries might want this as a local pride issue.

mariuolo• 14 years ago

"Presidential deGrees"?

فلسطين. top-level domain representing the Occupied Palestinian Territory

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