In <ilu3cx6inaz(_dot_)fsf(_at_)josefsson(_dot_)org> Simon Josefsson
<simon+ietf-822(_at_)josefsson(_dot_)org> writes:
Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> writes:
Yes. Unfortunately, the IDNA proponents are refusing to consider local
parts, login names, etc.
perhaps because it's not in their charter to do so?
They seem to assume that other groups adopt their solution to solve
such problems though. This group seem to look at adopting the IDN
solutions for localpart. Which may be a bad idea since the IDNA
proposals wasn't developed to solve this issues.
The IDN WG should have been chartered to achieve IDNs in core internet
protocols, not just IDNs as an isolated entity. Well, too late now.
So it is left to groups like us to do the necessary standardization work
for Email. Which means that we should be looking at it carefully now, and
feeding back any problems into the IDNA people while there is still time
to change things.
However, I am less sure than I was that adapting IDNA for the local part
is the best way. How do you know that <zz--jrgen-kva(_at_)foo(_dot_)com> is
intended
to be displayed as <jürgen(_at_)foo(_dot_)com>? Perhaps "zz--jrgen-kva" really
*was*
the local-part for the entity intended to receive the message.
OTOH, you are going to get this problem with any encoding that satisfies
the existing syntax of a local-part.
Another difficulty is that the genuine local-part might contain
significant uppercase letters, and the IDNA encoding loses that
information (that is an example of a matter that could be fed into the
ongoing punycode work).
So perhaps we should still be looking at other possibilities for local
part, such as RFC 2047. Yes that needs care to ensure it is done
canonically, but that is just a matter of insisting that the whole
local-part be treated as exactly one encoded-word.
--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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