In *theory* you should be able to follow this test user:

[edent@mastodon.social]

OK, let's try the experiment two years later.

I've created a Fediverse account with a non-ASCII username.

@你好@i18n.viii.fi

Please try to follow it and then answer the poll questions.

If you can click & follow, which app and service are you using?

THANKS GANG!

[cazmockett@mastodon.social]

@Edent ivory on iOS - account name no clicky ️

[riffraff@mastodon.social]

@Edent on mastodon android client it's not a link and does not show up in search. But I do see other profiles with the same characters in the search results so I'm not sure the profile is indexed at all

[meyerweb@mastodon.social]

@Edent Can’t click on, can’t find with search, so probably can’t follow, but only voted “cannot click on” because I can’t verify whether following is(n’t) possible.

[macgirvin@activitypub.space]

@edent@mastodon.social -- Works fine in forte and the streams repository. Unicode handles have been supported since around 2019. It also should work fine in all of the other fedi projects (zap, roadhouse, misty, redmatrix2020, osada, etc.) that were derived from that codebase. Didn't answer the poll because those particular accounts have elected to not ever be given the option to create or reply to public activities.

[macgirvin@activitypub.space]

@edent@mastodon.social -- Just looked again... this was first introduced as a hidden feature in redmatrix around 2013-2014, and so may also be available currently in Hubzilla (behind the "system.unicode_usernames" feature toggle). There were some major changes in 2019 that to my knowledge weren't ever backported. I think these only applied to local usernames and not remote usernames, but the functionality in hubzilla still might need to be verified.

[macgirvin@activitypub.space]

I've just tested and that account also works fine with Hubzilla. I will mention that your implementation in this case uses url-encoded usernames while ours uses punycode. They should be able to interact just fine, but the fact that there are multiple ways to arrive at a solution could cause a bit of confusion for implementers.

You'll need to use punycode if you wish to federate with the diaspora protocol or email or any other projects or protocols which restrict the character set for usernames. So it might end up being a more flexible solution in the long run and should work fine with every other fediverse project today. ASCII-restricted software will just use the xn-- name; and all their links and buttons should work fine.

Url-encoding should also work, but perhaps not so universally and easily as punycode; as witnessed by the number of issues documented in this thread.

[edent@mastodon.social]

@macgirvin
I thought Punycode was only for domain names. Are you saying you also use it for the user part?

[macgirvin@activitypub.space]

@edent@mastodon.social -- It's also used for the username component of email addresses iirc; as these are originally also specified as 7-bit US-ASCII. So I convert local usernames with idn. Just something I did out of habit really. You can use UTF-8 if you want, so I'm only saying that punycode seems to federate better based on my experience. We tested this with a bunch of fediverse software at the time and it just worked. We'll accept either.

[julian@activitypub.space]

@macgirvin that's interesting, I hadn't thought of using punycode. Like @edent@mastodon.social my exposure to it was strictly limited to domains (and even then only to counter domain spoofing)