ietf-smtp
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ietf-smtp] Should we update an RFC if people refuse to implement parts of it ?

2021-05-26 12:00:19

 
From: John C Klensin
Date: 2021-05-26 03:34
To: John Levine; ietf-smtp
Subject: Re: [ietf-smtp] Should we update an RFC if people refuse to implement 
parts of it ?
 
 



--On Tuesday, May 25, 2021 14:29 -0400 John Levine
<johnl(_at_)taugh(_dot_)com> wrote:

It appears that John C Klensin  <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com> said:
It would certainly be appropriate to either revise the spec
or, better from my point of view, create a short applicability
statement that explains the reasoning behind the SHOULD and
the circumstances under which it would be sensible to ignore
it. ...

The thing that sometimes gets lost in "let's make the spec
conform to what implementations are doing" discussions in this
area is that there is an assumption behind the whole
collection of SMTPUTF8 specs, namely that the world really
wanted non-ASCII addressing and header field values. ...

This may seem like splitting hairs but there is a difference
between header fields that users see and fields that they
don't.  Message-IDs are still generally ASCII in EAI messages,
and I don't see any benefit from making the domain names in
trace headers U-labels rather than A-labels.

I'm not getting any pushback on Return-Path which really does
need to be UTF-8 is it's an EAI address.  I think the few MTAs
that put a FOR clause in the Received header put EAI addresses
there, too.

I recognize the distinction while also realizing that, as you
know, things often leak.  My recollection (if Jiankang is
following this, his memory is probably better than mine) 
is that
the WG explicitly discussed the issue and concluded that
U-labels were a better idea than A-labels.  


Yes, I think so. The EAI WG discussed this issue.
Section 3.7.3. Trace Information  encourages to use UTF-8 form.
One reason I think is that trace information will be put into header for human 
reading. UTF-8 is better for human reading.
A-label is ugly for human reading, but ok for machine reading.


Best Regards
Jiankang Yao




_______________________________________________
ietf-smtp mailing list
ietf-smtp(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-smtp