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1) With Unicode 8, sign writing and ASL,  the American / international
dichotomy is largely specious. Before that there were American indigenous
languages (Cheyenne etc.), but in my experience Americans don't usually
think of them them as American.

2) Google and friends are more than capable of handling redirects, even
when done badly.

3) Who type un-shortened URLs any more?

Cheers
Stuart

On Saturday, 20 February 2016, Chris Moschini <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Curious how others have handled this, as I'm sure those on this list have
> dealt with this.
>
> Any site that has mixed English/non-English content will quickly run into
> this issue:
>
> Page has a name like:
>
> Bob
>
> Intuitive URLs are nice, we'll put it at:
>
> /bob
>
> Page has a name like:
>
> Itajaí Cêrebro Raízes
>
> OK... should that be:
>
> /itajai-cerebro-raizes
> /itajaí-cêrebro-raízes
> /itaja-crebro-razes
>
> The first being easy for US-English users to type on a keyboard, and, valid
> in all URI specs.
>
> The second being the actual name, and valid in the HTML5 URI spec, invalid
> in the original URI spec, and will break old browsers like anyone on old
> enough versions of Internet Explorer. And, a US-English user probably
> doesn't know how to type it.
>
> The third being a naive "Remove anything that isn't on a US English
> keyboard" (regex /[^/w/d]/), works for everyone, simplest to code, least
> intuitive.
>
> The challenge isn't over yet. How about:
>
> עםמק שבםודאןב
>
> What should that URL be? /עםמק-שבםודאןב? And note that this is a
> right-to-left language, so in a sense just having the URL read left to
> right until this name is a bit Amerocentric on its own. Zero chance a US
> English keyboard user will have any idea how to type that, and, they're
> unlikely to recall it when sharing in a conversation either.
>
> I've seen 3 opinions and I dislike all of them:
>
> 1) Be Amerocentric like the old days. Just mush everything down to US
> keyboard chars and when there aren't any, give it an ID number.
>
> 2) Be open. Use it as-is and if someone can't type it well, there's always
> Google, and the page might not be in their language anyway so maybe that
> content isn't for them.
>
> 3) Do both. Accept both above URL approaches:
> 3a) ...and redirect to Amerocentric URL
> 3b) ...and redirect to international URL
> 3c) ...and don't redirect
>
> The problem with 1 is obvious.
>
> The problem with 2 is "That content isn't for them" is a false assertion.
> That Hebrew name above comes from an actual site, about an event in an area
> for primarily English speakers.
>
> The variations in 3 all have issues:
>
> 3c breaks SEO rules. You are supposed to have a single canonical URL for
> each page and each piece of content on your site, or else you're going to
> frustrate users looking for your content with multiple results for the same
> thing - or more likely, Google will punish you by pushing all of your
> frustrating results down and users will never find you.
>
> 3a and 3b break Web Performance rules, especially on mobile. A Redirect is
> a great way to ruin page load time. Presumably within your site you'd
> always link to the canonical URL, so those visiting the non-canonical will
> typically coming in from the outside. Wasting their time with a redirect is
> a good way to turn users away from your slow site.
>
> Interested to hear if there's a 4th, best option.
>