internationalized domain name http://www.unicode.org/faq/idn.html

In short: it is the job of the client to convert an IDN to Punycode. idn2 can do the convertion for you:

# idn2 www.köthe.de
www.xn--kthe-5qa.de

Testcases: http://www.köthe.de http://www.köln.de http://abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvxyzæøå.dk/ mailto:echo@köthe.de

The status of IDN support in Debian:

Browser

Software

IDN

note (Debian bug; upstream bug)

chromium

(./)

epiphany (GNOME)

(./)

URL showed broken

Firefox/Iceweasel

(./)

Konqueror (KDE)

(./)

w3m

{X}

lynx

{X}

links

{X}

links2

{X}

elinks

(./)

Browsing IDN works. :)

Email client

Software

IDN

note (Debian bug; upstream bug)

claws

{X}

evolution

{X}

(537124; #505198)

kmail

(./)

mutt

(./)

Thunderbird/Icedove

(./)

tin

(./)

Still under construction.

other software

Software

IDN

note (Debian bug; upstream bug)

bind9-host

{X}

support disabled: why?

curl

(./)

dnsutils

{X}

lftp

{X}

signing party caff

?

was a problem but not tested? 637222

wget

(./)

whois

(./)

Server software like apache, bind9, postfix, dovecot still works with ASCII because of punycode and is not needed to be tested/listed.

non Debian software

just for comparision

Software

IDN

Android Mail:

?

Android Browser:

(./) but URL shown in punycode

Apple iOS+Mac: Mail

(./)

Apple iOS+Mac: Safari

(./)

Windows: IE 9++

(./)

Windows: Outlook 2010

(./)