Hello Ronald, DB-WG, > On 6 Nov 2019, at 23:46, Ronald F. Guilmette via db-wg <[email protected]> wrote: > > In message <[email protected]>, > Piotr Strzyzewski <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I do not object having properly coded non-ASCII email addresses in the >> database. > > First, just to be clear, we are really only discussing the representation > of domain names within the data base. Of course, any email address contains > one of those, but we are specifically -not- discussing the representation > of the user-ID portion of any email address in the data base. >
Understood. The user-ID (local) portion of an email address is not affected, only the domain. > Second, it is nice that you are OK with "properly coded non-ASCII" domain > names in the data base. So I am I. That's not the question. The question > is how should IDNs be -represented- within the data base. > > As I have stated, it is my opinion that the only two viable options at > the present time are either (a) punycode or else (b) UTF-8. DB-WG: - if (a), should the RIPE database automatically convert IDN domain names in email addresses into punycode? - or if (b), should the RIPE database support UTF-8 for the domain part of IDN email addresses? This is technically possible in the Whois server side, but it's a large change for clients. > > ISO-8859-1 is not, as far as I know, a standardized or appropriate way > of encoding IDNs in any context. If I am wrong about that, then please > do correct me an please do point me at the RFC which states otherwise. > Using ISO-8859-1 to encode IDN email addresses in the RIPE database does cause some issues: - Only a small subset of the UTF-8 character set is supported, characters outside ISO-8859-1 are substituted with a '?' on Whois update. - ISO-8859-1 encoded email addresses may not be handled properly by Whois clients or mail servers. > > Regards, > rfg > Regards Ed Shryane RIPE NCC
