Non-ASCII Internet addresses? (Was: Comment on the draft MIME Part 1 document)

[Olle Jarnefors <ojarnef@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > The RFC 1342 _approach_ is appropriate, though: Decide a new
> > interpretation of legal but seldomly used character sequences in
> > addresses as _representing_ non-ASCII characters.
> >
> > +  Old mail software can handle addresses chosen to represent
> >    non-ASCII characters with no problems.  They will however be
> >    cryptic to human users.
> > 
> > +  New mail software will display such addresses using the
> >    intended non-ASCII characters.  Human users will be able to
> >    read and, in important cases, remember such addresses with
> >    the same ease as pure ASCII addresses.
> 
> I don't think this is a good idea.
> 
> It's important that the "displayed" form of an address be identical to
> the way you spell it when you type it in. ...

I agree with this but I don't see how it can be an argument
against my proposal.  There is no reason why mail software,
implementing the rules for representing non-ASCII characters,
can't be fully symmetric in the sense that all non-ASCII
characters that can be displayed can also be input by normal
keyboard methods.  On my Swedish keyboard there is a key for the
letter A WITH DIAERESIS.  To write an address containing this
letter (by means of my proposed encoding) I will press this key.