Re: Can we back up a bit and ask some basic questions? Analternate model

[Roy Badami <roy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'd like to make a further comment on the UTF8ADDRESSES proposal.

I don't necessarily think that UTF8ADDRESSES is a bad idea.  There is
far more scope for both IMAA and UTF8ADDRESSES to co-exist than there
was for two approaches to coexist in IDNs.

The e-mail infrastructure is far more easily extensible than the DNS
infrastructure. RFC (2)821 allows us the ESMTP extension mechanism,
and RFC (2)822 allows us to add additional headers.  These mechanisms
are both powerful and general, and may well be useful to furthering
the goal of IMAs in a number of ways (about which I have more to say,
but that will have to wait for another message).

Compare it with the situation for mail bodies.  The original MIME WG
chose not to extend SMTP to require it to be 8-bit-clean, but to
define quoting mechanisms to allow the transport of 8-bit mail over a
7-bit transport.

Subsequently, 8BITMIME was defined, to allow consenting MTAs to
exchange 8-bit mail unencoded over 8-bit-clean channels.

I think that there will clearly be a demand for both mechanisms to
exist, and I'm sure both kinds of mechanisms will be standardised.  As
with MIME, initial deployment will probably primarily use an ACSII
encoding, but over time the native 8-bit approach will become more and
more prevalent.

It's unclear to me whether this group should confine itself to the
ASCII-encoded protocol, or should address both approaches
simultaneously.

I realize that many will probably wish to confine themselves to IMAA,
but I think there is a benefit in releasing both solutions to the
world simultaneously, so that people can choose which they wish to
deploy.

	-roy