mod_fileiri implements http IRIs for directories/files, i.e. if accepts URIs with non-ASCII characters encoded in UTF-8 and converts them to the legacy encoding used in the file system (which can be specified per directory, or even finer if necessary (although that's a real hack)). What is more, it continues to accept requests in the legacy encoding specified, and redirects them to the correct UTF-8 form, which then returns the actual document (without looping). There is also a backwards mode, which does redirects from URIs in a specified legacy encoding to UTF-8 if the directory/ filenames are in UTF-8. WWW: http://www.w3.org/2003/06/mod_fileiri/