I don't offer any answers, but the problems raised on this list concerning file paths using local language characters would appear to have some parallels in the world of URIs. Martin Duerst and others at W3C have been working on the problem of internationalization (I18N) of URIs, and their proposals were recently published as a Proposed Standard RFC [1]. If this area is being considered in the design of Haskell libraries, there may be some lessons there to be copied. #g -- [1] ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3987.txt ------------ Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact