I’m assuming Unicode in handles is not allowed? At least by Mastodon.
This user is not able to have their content federated because the username is all Hebrew (I think?) characters!
@julian I just reported the issue over on the @Hubzilla Support Forum and created an issue in our repository.
#[1](https://hubzilla.org/channel/adminsforum?mid=7296e345-0ba9-51f9-b376-8e29368f3a07)
Note: To prevent spam, you must be following
adminsforum@hubzilla.orgto participate in the Hubzilla Support Forum.
Hi @julian,
as long as nobody cares about the according standards, the #fediverse will be a brittle nerd niche.The according standard is IMO https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7565.html#%3A%5C%7E%3Atext=userpart ( #RFC7033 and #RFC7565 ) referring to https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7564#section-4.2.1.
What you find in the wild, however, is a different story as thee is no agreed upon #validator service nowhere.
We accept punycode usernames and render appropriately; or pass through UTF-8 usernames. The biggest issue is autocomplete; so we provided that using aliases/petnames for connections. Probably will have issues on some platforms.
Hi, hello everyone. I’m sorry to hear that I can’t be followed because of my username characters. Does this mean that I can’t be followed here on the forum or is it something else? Also, should I change my username to English characters?
@לאצי I agree with @julian, you shouldn’t don’t have to change your username. It’s just a technical hurdle to jump over.
Since I can follow you on Hubzilla (via a specific URL), I don’t think it is an issue with ActivityPub or WebFinger. I’m sure there is some solution that would allow other platforms to follow your account.
לאצי don’t worry about it! You shouldn’t have to alter your username just to suit our latin-character world 😁
For what it’s worth, I’m reading this thread from Lemmy and can see this comment of yours and access your profile, so in principle there isn’t anything wrong with your username.
The ActivityPub and WebFinger spec does mention that Mastodon has some strict requirements there. Only alphanumeric characters, underscores, dashes, and dots.
Would their ActivityPub username be לאצי@community.nodebb.org then?
I tried to follow that username and it would not let me.
scott@loves.tech said in Unicode in handles: > Would their ActivityPub username be לאצי@community.nodebb.org then?<br /><br />I tried to follow that username and it would not let me.
Indeed, that’s probably the characters in their handle.
In Hubzilla, I was able to follow this user by pasting this URL into the “Add Connection” box:
#[1](https://community.nodebb.org/user/לאצי)
I copied the URL in the browser for that user’s profile (which contained the Hebrew characters). When I pasted it, it converted it to UTF-8 text (seen above).
Hubzilla was able to find the user based on that UTF-8 URL. So it is possible to follow such an account, at least with Hubzilla, via the UTF-8 URL.
It could not find %D7%9C%D7%90%D7%A6%D7%99@community.nodebb.org though, probably because NodeBB is not expecting the UTF-8 version of the username.
Huh. My Lemmy mobile client has the handle and host inverted. It doesn’t look like this in the default web UI, though.
Also, my post from Lemmy hasn’t landed here yet.
Hi @kichae,
fun with RTL. How is it supposed to be?mro@digitalcourage.social the order of the Hebrew characters is correct, although I believe it should be wrapped in
<bdi>tags so the rest of the line isn’t affected 🙂</bdi>
I’m curious about how the forum https://mitmachim.top/, which operates entirely in Hebrew, deals with the issue of Unicode usernames. Does this issue even exist there? Also, it’s worth noting that Mitmachim Top is based on NodeBB.
לאצי the usernames work fine locally (that is, on the site itself). It’s when interoperating with other sites not running NodeBB where there are issues, it seems 🙂
