Yes, but is there anyone in this forum that is likely to use messages
with mostly non-ASCII characters a lot? Japanese doesn't count, since
we already have iso-2022-jp for that. Likewise for Latin-1.
The target audience isn't the list, but the whole mail-Internet. There
are no iso-2022-jp analogues for, e.g., Russian or Greek much less
Hindi. And I gather that there are proposals around that would push
some of those languages (or languages/dialects using similar character
collections) off the BMP. We should either bite the bullet on UCS-4
(32 bit) now, or should be prepared for a second transition a few years
down the line.
Thanks for the report, but it doesn't answer the question "Is 8-bit
SMTP expected to become universally possible?" Unless and until 8-bit
becomes universal, when you mention UTF-2, you're really talking about
a further encoding of it (e.g. quoted-printable), or you're talking
SMTP Ex chair hat on....
Making protocol plans on the assumption that 8bit SMTP will be
universally possible within the near (or even finite) future would be
optimism to the point of silliness.
There will be some penetration of 8bit availability. It may even
expand rapidly. But there will be holdouts for a l-o-n-g time.
SMTP Ex chair hat off.
--john