Has anybody looked into the transitional issues that would arise if Email
was to be moved into allowing UTF-8 headers?
yes, though perhaps not in sufficient detail.
frankly I think it would be easier to transition to a completely different
mail format. that is, I think that having two slightly different
mail formats (one ascii, another utf-8) is more confusing and more
likely to lead to interoperability problems than having two obviously
distinct formats which require explicit translation between the two.
Or are you resigned to the fact that we shall still be encoding headers
using RFC 2047 in 40 years time even though all transports and operating
systems will be 8bit (and even bibary) clean by that time?
please don't cite 40 years of extrapolation from current practice as
'the fact'.
yes, I expect that there will eventually be a transition to a new message
format.
no, I don't think that 8bit transparency of mail transports alone is
sufficient to warrant the pain of that transition - because zero
additional functionality is gained beyond a small bandwidth savings,
and the pain of having to upgrade millions of installations of hundreds
of different mail programs (MTAs, UAs, list servers, mail filters,
POP servers, IMAP servers, etc.) is too substantial for that minimal
gain - which is mostly wanted for the sake of purity. it doesn't
lessen complexity, it increases it - because mail handling programs
would still have to recognize the old format as well as the new one
for many years.
what would be worth the pain of transition? a hypothetical redesign
of the internet email system that is both reliable (in that you can
expect messages to be delivered with integrity) and safe to use (in
that it won't expose your systems to security threats).
my guess is that this is at least 10-15 years away though. there's
just too much investment in the current infrastructure.
Keith