< My proposal uses a type (ii) approach, but it has no problem with quoting
< conventions. Take my own name as an example. I admit that it's
< theoretically possible that the local-part
<
< olle_j*5A'rnefors
<
< can be used by someone who wants exactly this sequence of ASCII
< characters. Such a person will have to live with the fact that his
< address will be displayed with an a-umlaut instead of "*5A'" for users
< with modern mail programs. Or his postmaster will have to rethink his
< principles for forming cryptic mailbox names. There is no need for
< quoting conventions to allow displaying or writing addresses with "real"
< "*" characters, because such addresses are _identical_ to the
< corresponding addresses with non-ASCII characters.
<
< I don't think that this is a big practical problem. Asterisks are very
< rare in local-parts. And there is no natural reason to use them.
One note of warning about whatever encoding scheme is devised:
Most unix mail systems prohibit the following set of characters in mail names
`;&|^<>()
Some prevent even more characters.
These characters are all special to the shell and could potentially be used
to create a security hole.
Tony Hansen
hansen(_at_)pegasus(_dot_)att(_dot_)com,
tony(_at_)attmail(_dot_)com
att!pegasus!hansen, attmail!tony