Hi Mats,
Michael, can you describe the standards in German?
it is similar. We have the non-ASCII characters ä, ö, ü, and ß and the generally accepted transliteration is ä => ae ö => oe ü => ue ß => ss And as you say, there is also an IDD field in our passports where this transliteration is used. Contrary to Sweden, the same is also generally used for domain names in Germany. For example the official website for the city of Munich (in German München) is www.muenchen.de and not www.munchen.de. Similarly the city of Münster is available at muenster.de or stadt-muenster.de. Nobody would think of looking at munster.de ... which by the way is even a different city in Germany: Munster. Nevertheless the transliterations is not a free choice that can be used everywhere you like. With computers it's slightly more common, but if you read a newspaper, book or similar printed media, you would be very surprised to see those transliterations. The German registry Denic, does not consider those characters as variants. Two completely different entities may (and actually have) register gruen.de and grün.de (the colour green). Cheers, Michael -- ____________________________________________________________________ | | | knipp | Knipp Medien und Kommunikation GmbH ------- Technologiepark Martin-Schmeisser-Weg 9 44227 Dortmund Germany Dipl.-Informatiker Fon: +49 231 9703-0 Fax: +49 231 9703-200 Dr. Michael Bauland SIP: Michael.Bauland@knipp.de Software Development E-mail: Michael.Bauland@knipp.de Register Court: Amtsgericht Dortmund, HRB 13728 Chief Executive Officers: Dietmar Knipp, Elmar Knipp