Thread: Is this what you think about Cyrillic URLs?

This article is saying that people in Russia don't like the new Cyrillic URLs because they believe that this will isolate the Russian internet from the rest of the internet... Hmmm...... Is that what you think?

Have the Cyrillic URLs taken off (=become popular) yet, or are they still an unusual novelty?

Originally Posted by New York Times

“This is one more step toward isolation,” said Aleksei Larin, 31, a construction engineer in Tula, 115 miles south of Moscow. “And since this is a Kremlin project, it is possible that it will lead to the introduction of censorship, which is something that certain officials have long sought.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/wo...22cyrillic.htm

EDIT: Thinking about this, I am not sure I see the connection. English is NOT the norm and neither is Latin script. My own language (Swedish) loses three letters online because they don't exist in English. Personally I'd support anything that makes the internet accessible to as many people as possible. According to NY Times' line of reasoning, French, German, Chinese, Spanish.... are also "isolated" because speakers of these languages tend to stick to sites in their own language.

I agree with you, Hanna. Cyrillic URLs have nothing common with 'isolation'. If Russian speaking people want to visit other domains they still could. More likely these URLs could be the sign for people who can't read cyrillic to stay away.

Actually the journalist who wrote this doesn't understand the basics of how you configure something like this... He seems to think that all the new DOMAINS require a new site. Whereas in reality you'd just register both the URLs (Latin and Cyrillic) and point both to the same site.

Plus, I don't see the connection between the script used for the URL and censorship. All you need is a DNS server that to send you on to the site. The DNS server and the site can be hosted on the other side of the Earth...

I've got only one question about cyrillic URL: why? (or, in Russian, нафига?). Ten years of Internet in Russia showed that every housewife is perfectly able to type "odnoklassniki.ru" in address bar. I don't see a point.
Another steps in this direction are national OS, national search engine and national browser. And the only possible answer I can invent is corruption

Originally Posted by Basil77

More likely these URLs could be the sign for people who can't read cyrillic to stay away.

Isn't it a kind of isolation? Even if you make a site for cyrillic-only people, you cut off some slavic people who can read Russian with some effort but can not type. And many Russians abroad. Etc.

I don't like the idea of non-Latin URLs.

First, it makes a number of inconveniences right now. Like those URLs which are not recognized by the engine of this forum. I also remember some Italian colleagues who were unable to contact some EU (or NATO?) official who made his email with French letters. Email was printed on paper and it was a problem to type this email. Than when they managed to type it, the mailing system was unable to process it on some stage. Etc etc. There are too many issues, some of them can be resolved with new standards, some can not.

Second, it is ideologically incorrect . It WILL make an isolation of some kind.

Third, specifically Russian is too inflected, long and inexact to speak to computer in Russian.

where are some Cyrillic URLs?

Originally Posted by sperk

where are some Cyrillic URLs?

http://президент.рф/

Originally Posted by E-learner

Originally Posted by sperk

where are some Cyrillic URLs?

http://президент.рф/

kind of funny, the links in the site are in part latin: http://президент.рф/acts

I think there are pros and cons to it. Yes, it may be a way to give more Russian-speaking people access to Russian websites using Cyrillic writing if they really can't use Latin letters. But I get the impression that there aren't that many of them. After all, most other interaction with your computer (I'm thinking specifically of command lines) if done by keyboard uses Latin letters anyway, correct?

I would actually find Cyrillic URLs easier to use because reading Russian with Latin letters gives me pain. I need to read it aloud like a six-year-old, especially as English and my native German don't agree about how to represent Russian with Latin letters... But while it is true that it is not necessary to create a separate website for a Cyrillic URL (and a second site with the same content would be counterproductive even because search engines will punish duplicates by downlisting them), the URL which will turn up in search engines will still be the Latin one.

I spent my holdiay this year on the Danish isle of Romo. Both o's with a dash though them. I have no idea (and can't be arsed to figure out) how to write those stupid symbols on my German keyboard in Linux, and likewise I wouldn't expect anyone to figure out German ä, ö, ü and ß. German domains with such symbols are few and far between, but I've seen them erroneously used in e-mail addresses very frequently. Now when someone tells you (speaking) his e-mail is römer@e-mail.de, while previously you could be sure (if you were in any way computer-savvy) it would have to be oe, now you have to ask or guess. And not many e-mail providers allow aliases, so you'd have to have and check both addresses.

Anyone who uses a Cyrillic domain exclusively will isolate themselves from the non-Cyrillic writing world. I'm not saying that this is intended, but people should know that. And the people who get to make decisions in businesses are rarely those who know what they are doing, when it comes to IT.

But I don't think it will get widespread. Domains like .biz, .info, .name, .museum have been with us for quite a while and I still have to find more than a handful of examples, where such a domain was primary. And while my compny does get a lot of spam (mostly from China, but even a phone call from within Germany) about someone allegedly trying to register our company name with such additional extensions, nothing really has happened in that regard. But it could. Yes, odnoklassiki.ru probably would register the Cyrillic URL to block it from misuse, but would every small company? I seriously doubt that.

The primary reason for the usage of only the basic Latin symbols is that the historical ASCII set of symbols just includes these. There simply wasn't enough space for more than those within the constraints of the 8-bit system initially used in communication technology, and while today we have extensions of that system to include Cyrillic, Japanese and even Klingon, these are just that: extensions. You can't change the basics anymore without reinventing computing, a task which is like reinventing society so that it no longer runs on money. But that means that the right extension needs to be in place for Cyrillic URLs to work. I mean, everyone who has tried to sensibly quote a ru.wiktionary.org URL with a specific Russian search term knows what happens:

http://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%81%D0 ... 1%80%D1%8C

Does anyone see the word словарь there? For me it's just HTML escape characters.

And we probably have all seen e-mails or forum posts which quote foreign letters in such a way that the browser or e-mail client mismatches the encoding and only illegible rubbish remains. Who would want that?

So I think that additional symbols on top of the basic Latin ones probably cause more trouble than they're worth. I don't believe Cyrillic URLs will be used for censorship or with isolation as an intended goal, but they won't be worth the hassle either, just as ä, ö, ü and ß won't be for German sites.

Originally Posted by sperk

kind of funny, the links in the site are in part latin: http://президент.рф/acts

Actually that raises another important point: web servers (and computers in general) are able to deal with the basic Latin set only with any reliability. Filenames with spaces and deviating symbols (or even long filenames according to the way Windows creates them) often cause huge problems. Files with Cyrillic names will cause even more.

Originally Posted by Hanna

This article is saying that people in Russia don't like the new Cyrillic URLs because they believe that this will isolate the Russian internet from the rest of the internet... Hmmm...... Is that what you think?

Any company that deems worth having presence in the rest of the world, will have latin mirror, so I don't think it's more than isolation on individual basis - if there is no content in English it's isolated as well. Chinese URLs frigthen me more. Just imageine - you buy new *thingawidget* and everything, including manufacturer's site address is in ... bingo! Now try to type it into your browser...

English is NOT the norm and neither is Latin script.

Nor is Latin script the norm in math, chemistry, physics, etc, oh wait?
P.s. Speaking on localization and computers - onscreen menus on TV are already localized. Bios setup - no one yet. (diy hacks doesn't count - http://foto.radikal.ru/f.aspx?i=9153c8c ... 730fd18f94 )

Originally Posted by bitpicker

I think there are pros and cons to it. Yes, it may be a way to give more Russian-speaking people access to Russian websites using Cyrillic writing if they really can't use Latin letters. But I get the impression that there aren't that many of them. After all, most other interaction with your computer (I'm thinking specifically of command lines) if done by keyboard uses Latin letters anyway, correct?

These people don;t use command line. They have to type domain on windows 7 logon screen, however, and it's for sure not in Russian.

I do not understand people who cry how much they dislike this idea. The only reasonable argument is "possible technical problems'. But if there ARE certain problems, they can be solved eventually. I remember times when file names could be only 8 symbols long. Were people equaly panicky about newly available long names?

Isolation is not something to worry either, in my opinion. If some people care more about their Russian-speaking users - it's their right to use a Russian URL and "isolate" everyone else who can't type Russian. Or they can use mirrors to please everyone. Or a "Latin" URL to target foreigners and "traditionalists". Or whatever. It's called freedom of choice.

Russian urls can be popular among small local business owners, who work exclusively with people from a relatively small area (a sity or a district withis Russia or CIS country). Even if there is a forign user who for some reason decides to brouse a local store of school uniforms, Latin url won't make a difference, because most of such sites are in Russian anyway.

And, at last, there's a big chance, that Russian urls won't be too popular. So be it. But there's no reason to condemn them, it's just another step in Internet evolution.

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

I remember times when file names could be only 8 symbols long. Were people equaly panicky about newly available long names?

They should have, because there are problems with that, even in Windows itself, and even more in interoperation with other operating systems. Just look at a long filename in the DOS box. Internally it is still an eight + 3 name because Windows can't do anything else. It has a proprietary extension to enable longer names (and such insanities as spaces in file names), but that is firmly Microsoft only in the way it is implemented, and neither sane nor safe practice.

8.3 file names are actually DOS-specific limitation (to be precise, specific to FAT file system). UNIX / Linux file systems didn't have this convention, as well as all modern ones.