On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 09:08:49PM +0200, Stefan Sels wrote:
> On 18/10/2011 21:05, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 08:26:11PM +0200, Stefan Sels wrote:
> >
> >> 5336 defines an SMTP extension to allow the use of UTF8 within
> >> local-parts, the hostname part (i guess) is still handled via IDN.
> >
> > My assessment is that EAI (as proposed in the RFCs you quote) is
> > a terrible design. I personally would prefer that nobody implement
> > these IMNSHO ill-conceived standards.
> >
>
> Can you suggest a better standard to encode international characters
> into local-parts?
Doing nothing is I believe much better than the proposed standard.
As for a better standard, I would propose extending punycode syntax
to address localparts.
> And, if I may ask - as there are 12 days to moan about until it probably
> gets finalized- did you complain about this to the working group?
The working group did not consult my opinion. I was unaware of
their existence and charter.
> What are the specific flaw you dislike?
The entire approach really, it is much too complex, but specifically:
- The standard proposes carrying two addresses in the message
header and envelope for every recipient. This way lies insanity.
Bugs, security issues, unpredictable message handling.
- The standard fundamentally violates the design of MIME by
allowing transfer-encoding of composite (mail/message-rfc822)
parts. Breaks content inspection, MIME normalizers, ...
These are not minor issues. My vote is that this standard is dead
on arrival, may it soon be forgotten.
--
Viktor.
