Internet domain names to be available in Gurmukhi soon

CHANDIGARH: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers( I CAN N ), whose main role is to manage and oversee the internet domain name registration process, is soon going to make available internationalised domain names (IDN’s) including top level domain names in Gurmukhi.

This was revealed by Gurpreet Singh Lehal, dean of faculty of Computing Sciences and director research centre for Punjabi Language Technology, Punjabi University.

“As a result, people will be able to create websites with web addresses and email IDs in Gurmukhi. Thus one can have complete domain name like punjab iuniversity. punjab in Gurmukhi script,” said Lehal. Before making available the top domain names in Gurmukhi to public, the process has to pass through technical and linguistic deliberations, he said.

“The domain name should be a valid string based on linguistic characteristics of Gurmukhi. Care has to be taken for visually similar characters, canonically equivalent letters and linguistic rules of consonant-vowel combination have to be followed,” Lehal said, adding that the security issues including phishing attacks have to be taken care of.

In this context, a Neo-Brahmi Panel meeting was held at Colombo from 13-16 December.

Lehal, under whose guidance the linguistic and technical rules for Gurmukhi script are being framed, had been specially invited for the Colombo meeting by ICANN for giving his inputs. Other members of Lehal’s team are Harvinder Pal Kaur, Paramjit Singh Sidhu and Boota Singh Brar.

The availability of website names in Gurmukhi and other Indian scripts will have the potential to transform the Internet into a truly global and multilingual tool and will be a good start toward the internationalisation of the internet. It will also ease the migration of content exclusively in Gurmukhi and other Indian languages.