So we need to know now where Email is going on the IDNA front, and if
there are going to be changes to accomodate IDNA, then one might as well
look into the UTF-8 change at the same time. One upheaval is always better
than two.
so when you want to go up a hill, you'd rather climb one 10 foot wall
than 10 1-foot steps?
Yes, in some situations. Particularly when the cost of making a move
includes a large constant term independent of the height of the step.
if that were the case, I'd agree with you. but it doesn't apply here,
because there's no need for a massive upgrade.
For example, the cost (in terms of general irritation, hassle, etc) of
persuading the whole email community to implement some change worldwide is
largely independent of the size of that change.
yes, but the cost of persuading the whole email community to implement
a change to UTF-8 in any timeframe significantly shorter than 20 years
is so large that it seems totally infeasible.
who is going to pay for such a change? who is going to want to deal
with the disruption that it would cause? certainly not the large number
of users for which ASCII-only addresses and 2047 encodings work
reasonably well.
the reason many of us favor a solution that doesn't require a massive
upgrade is that we realize that a massive upgrade of the existing mail
system, which would not benefit a significant fraction of current users,
is a non-starter. OTOH, if we recommend a solution that is compatible
with existing mail formats and message handling software, users can
upgrade whenever they see a benefit in doing so. most of the software
in use when the standard was adopted would get upgraded within a few
years anyway.
and there's so little benefit in "pure UTF-8" that it's conceivable
that it would never be worth the trouble to transition to it. for
example, "pure UTF-8" wouldn't rid the user agent of the need to
parse message header fields and to treat different parts of a
structured field in different ways.
Keith