This section addresses all questions related to starting a Web site in several languages or in at least one non-Western language. For convenience, we will speak of a multilingual site even when referring to a single, non-Western language. Initially, the Web was designed around the ISO 8859-1 character set, which supports only Western European languages. In addition, HTTP was extremely simple, containing nothing that would facilitate access to multilingual sites. But things have changed significantly; today, the Web is used in many languages - including non-Western languages - and the protocol has been enhanced.

However, there are a number of things you must know before you start designing a multilingual site. As is true for the Internet in general, there are standards whose purpose is to ensure interoperability. Web standards are still evolving, but some have already provided for internationalization, while others remain in the ASCII stone age. To the extent possible, the design of a multilingual site should respect existing standards interpreted within an internationalization framework. The first standard to know, of course, is HTML, the hypertext markup language used to format the major part of the Web's content.
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Its internationalization is well under way (now an Internet standard, RFC 2070), based on Unicode (see Coding section) supporting HTML documents in practically every language. You can also refer to <FONT FACE> considered harmful and to Alis's HTML Mini-Guide.

At last, there is a true standard for HTTP, the hypertext transfer protocol, in use since 1990. The relevant aspects for internationalization are character set labeling, which ensures correct document interpretation, and language negotiation, which is used at a site to provide documents in the user's language of preference (provided, of course, that it is available).

URLs are Web resource addresses - the ones your browser uses when you click on a link. For the time being, they are limited to ASCII for practical reasons, but internationalization is being discussed.

You may want to use an HTML editor to prepare your documents. There are all kinds, from simple notepads to visual editors that hide tags, but several have small problems with non-Western languages and HTML entities in particular.

You should also know a bit about browser and server capabilities in order to make the most of them while ensuring maximum interoperability. Some considerations also apply to proxy servers.