This IDN rookie is pretty confused. Any IDN experts here? (basic questions)

[DomainMOD]

Ok, I have to admit, I am extremely green when it comes to IDNs, but I'm trying to learn. I have read some contradictory things online, and I was wondering if anyone could clarify some things for me.

Please bear with me, as I'm sure these questions are going to sound ridiculously dumb to the experienced IDNer.

- From what I understood you could already register IDNs for generic TLDs (.com, .net, etc.), which is what the IDN wikipedia page also says. So now that I've read the below article, I'm somewhat confused. This article makes it sound like IDNs aren't available for TLDs that are under ICANN's control.

Digital East Asia » Blog Archive » ICANN Starts the Ball Rolling on Foreign-Character Domain Names; Are English URLs Destined For Minority Status?

- Are there any good high level overviews of the IDN world? How and when everything started, where things are going, dates for specific miletones, etc. I've search online quite a bit but I cant' seem to find a definitive timeline, and I'm finding that a lot of the information is different from site to site.

One of my clients recently mentioned that they want to get into the IDN world, and I admitted that I am fairly clueless in that area (with different wording, of course :P), however this is definitely something I want to get into, or at least learn more about so I can have a better understanding of the domain world as a whole.

Any information that could be offered up would be greatly appreciated.

 

[lipps]

This is going to be about your best resource on the history and timeline of the idn process

w w w.icann.org/en/topics/idn/

Icann likes to call it the "fast track" process but in reality it has been anything but.
I think you can date it back to 2002 and before on these web pages.
In reality you would be looking back to about 1999 for the first tales of idn theory on the web.

Good reading there if you want to know more.