(Michele: Have you tried using punycode for that Irish char? Does it work better?) As to emojis I think I'll pushback on the characterization (ahem!) of this as frivolous. I used to communicate quite a bit with a friend who is Chinese, born and raised in Beijing but quite fluent in English, went to university in the states etc. She would frequently start replying largely in emojis. Perhaps some of it was just her being amusing but at times it became like solving rebuses (rebi?) Then it occurred to me that Chinese, being a logographic language, is not that dissimilar to emojis which are ideographic and only arguably logographic (her use seemed roughly logographic.) The point being that perhaps to those of accustomed to phonographic writing systems (Latin, Arabic, Korean, etc) emojis may seem more removed from a writing system than to those who use logographic systems like Chinese. So there may be some emerging bridge there which us phonographicists don't see -- new extensions to character sets just as valid as our writing systems descending from early Semitic writing systems &c. At any rate we should endeavor to at least clear the path for such evolution rather than trying to judge its value. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*