ietf-822
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Re: IDN (was Did anyone tell Microsoft yet?)

2002-04-30 11:55:56

I think that the local-part is the smallest of the problems. local-parts are
uninterpreted and can thus carry any encoding that would be a valid
local-part in rfc2822, e.g. rfc2047. 

even if the recipient MTA could handle rfc2047 encodings:

- this would still break other message handling software that depends on 
  being able to compare addresses for equality (since 2047 encoding
  doesn't have a canonical form)

- existing MTAs and gateways that translate 2047-encoded character 
  strings would cause addresses to be rewritten to a form in which 
  they would not be valid.

2047 would be a poor choice for the encoding of local-parts.
far better would be to use an encoding similar to that used by IDNA,
since local-parts and DNS names have similar requirements for matching.

Keith