Skip to main content

FediForum October 2026

@Fediverse@Handles in Every Language

Topics Identity & accounts Protocols & standards

Convener: Jim DeLaHunt (@jdlh@mstdn.ca)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

Notes

  • Self-introductions

  • Related: “@小明@範例.測試, or, Fediverse handles in every language”, presented Aug 9 2026 by Jim DeLaHunt to COSCUP 2026 https://coscup.org/2026/en/session/S7KAQQ/ , slides https://go.jdlh.com/coscup2026 .

  • tags.pub service creates user accounts for hashtags. Needs globally inclusive handles because hashtags are globally inclusive.

  • Terence Eden blog post on internationalised identifiers https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/02/internationalise-the-fediverse/ .

  • We are not hearing from many outside the English-language world.

  • About 50% of the people on the planet use scripts other than Latin script (not even regarding accented Latin letters).

  • Discussion at Social Community Group meeting last week.

  • We do not have limits in our standards, we have limits in implementations.

    • The handle structure we use (WebFinger) is perfectly capable of handling non-Latin characters in local part.

    • We have a profile which can handle non-Latin identifiers.

    • The limits are in the implementations. So let’s hold the implementations responsible.

    • RFC9421 (signatures) https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9421/

    • Social Community Group has a list of implementations with their RFC 9421 implementation status

    • A tool to make progress: make a list of implementations with green or red marks to show their degree of support.

    • Tracking issue here: https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-webfinger/issues/29

    • Let’s add a tracking document in the activitypub-webfinger repo

    • We can move it later if we need to move it somewhere

  • Activitypub-handles task force has this as one of its goals.

  • Handles columns:

    • Can you receive messages from that handle?

    • Can you send messages to that handle?

    • Is the handle linkified in the text?

    • Can you find the handle?

    • Divide by localpart/domain name part

    • Can server be hosted on a domain with non-latin characters?

    • Can users on the server have a non-latin localpart (username) in their handle?

  • JDLH: (from COSCUP plan)

    • find pioneers

    • find software that’s not doing well, and add issues and/or fixes

    • Pioneers use the software, and start living the globally inclusive Fediverse

    • Grow from there

  • Technical issues

    • in right-to-left languages, how are email addresses (closest analogue for our Webfingers) laid out?

      • emanresu@domain?

      • naimod@emanresu?

      • emanresu@naimod?

      • There is a Unicode bidirectional algorithm which sorts out right-to-left and left-to-right.

    • Unaccented latin alphabet falñbañks? <- LOL

      • niño@tags.pub

      • nino@tags.pub - as a fallback

      • This is transliteration. There is code and algorithms. See ICU (Internet Components for Unicode)

      • This is also related to confusable domain and alias names. See ICANN Label Generation Rules for domain names.

      • Homographic disambiguation

  • Best Practices papers might be a useful tool

    • e.g. best practices on what characters to allow in the local part of a Fediverse handle, or, as a user name on a Fediverse service

    • Instance administrators can refer to the best practice to make decisions

    • Server developers can implement features which make following the best practice easier

  • W3C Social Web Working Group https://github.com/w3c/socialwg , https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/social/, forum: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ .

  • List of email addresses in different scripts. Put an “@” at the head of an email address to make it a test handle.