Can we provide a login functionality in multiple language?

Question

My username is krunal.

And If i type my name in any language like Gujarati(કૃણાલ), Hindi(कृनल) or English(krunal) in username textbox than it should allowed me to login without any specific language selection.

I just want to know the views of other people regarding this functionality. Is it a good to provide a login functionality like this ?

Answer 1

OpenID would be a good start I think. It doesn't allow for multiple login names, and as Enrique said -- would be bad because of security issues. However it does give you the uniqueness of using an email address, however you have the freedom to choose whichever username you would like.

Answer 2

It is not a good idea. The login name should be unique. Allowing multiple strings for logging in will lead to confusion and security issues. So I think is not worth the try.

Answer 3

The closest I cna imagine is to have a database setup with a user ID's, language ID's. Have the password and user ID associated (one password only!), and then a link table with the User ID, Language ID, and then the actual username data. Clearly a username must be unique per language.

However, I agree also with Enrique here in that one username is good. Taking on Cosizzle's suggestion - you could definitely use OpenID. You could also make it really easy for the user and support authentication through Facebook or twitter tokens....

Answer 4

Imagine what would happen if usernames were not matched based on a single culture. You would either have to do a binary match (which is trickier than it sounds because of Unicode conversions) and it would make usernames case-sensitive making for a bad user experience or you would have to validate against every known character set conceivable on every login and user creation. For simplicity, it is easier, both to administer and for users, to force username uniqueness based on a single character set.

Answer 5

The mapping between different character sets isn't guaranteed to be one on one in all cases; that is, not every glyph/letter sequence in one language maps to a valid sequence in another language. Multiple different sequences in one set might even map to identical sequences in another. Therefore such a functionality can not be automatic, you probably won't be able to enter a Hindi character sequence on signup and have it automatically create an account with a matching english name, which then also maps to arabic, hebrew or greek.

Allowing the user to create additional login names in different character sets for their account might be an alternative, but this might lead to security problems by adding more valid login/password combinations, thus reducing the search space, or by creating ambiguities (different users suddenly having the same login).

But using different character sets might create other problems: what happens when the password for such a login is entered? Must/can it be given in the same character set as the login, or in a different character set? How does the user know which character set is used when he types in his password? How would password rules be enforced?