On 2016-02-03, at 05:43, Ted MacNEIL wrote:
> In general, e-mail servers are case insensitive.
>
But originating MUAs and MTAs must not assume that. By Internet standard,
domain names are case-insensitive, however, from RFC822:
6.2.4. DOMAIN-DEPENDENT LOCAL STRING
The local-part of an addr-spec in a mailbox specification
(i.e., the host's name for the mailbox) is understood to be
whatever the receiving mail protocol server allows. For exam-
ple, some systems do not understand mailbox references of the
form "P. D. Q. Bach", but others do.
(It makes clear elsewhere that the quotation marks must appear in the
mailbox reference.) And, again, originating MUAs and MTAs must
honor the requirement. Too many fail to do so. Address book utilities
are even worse.
And I and a local website developer learned to his dismay that in the url:
mailto://mail...@somehere.com
... the slashes must be preserved in the mailbox reference (RFC 1738)
Alas, popular browsers delete them (improperly); popular MUAs
preserve them (properly). But if those popular browsers were brought
into conformance with RFC 1738 it would "break" (in a Pickwickian
sense) vast quantities of defective HTML.
I strongly disagree with half of Postel's Principle.
But, if the ua.edu server treats mailbox references as case-insensitive,
who cares how they appear in IBM-Main?
-- gil
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