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Re: FYI: BOF on Internationalized Email Addresses (IEA)

2003-10-28 12:56:23
Mark Crispin wrote:
                                      In many regions where Latin
diacriticals are used, there is no acceptable transform of a surname to a
form that does not use diacriticals.  Simply omitting the diacritical
causes (at least to the inhabitants of those regions) a misspelling.

Ah, this one's easy.  Local parts aren't limited to Latin letters,
they can use all the ASCII printables.  Diacriticals are available
there, albeit in characters that are shared with other uses.
<dej`a_vu(_at_)foo(_dot_)example> is a perfectly valid email address already.
It doesn't start to get tricky until we get into the eastern European
languages -- ASCII only intentionally provides western European
diacriticals.

Cue the debate about whether the diacritic should go before or after
the base letter.

-zefram