Re: New draft, new idea

[Martin Duerst <duerst@xxxxxx>]

Hello Paul,

Overall, I'm glad you wrote up this proposal, even if I think
the main thing it does is show what we should not do.

At 16:58 04/02/04 -0800, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:

> Greetings again. Based on an idea originally proposed here by Keith Moore, 
> I have created yet another proposal. See 
> <http://www.imc.org/ietf-imaa/hoffman-iea-headermap-00.txt>, at least 
> until the Internet Drafts directory gets it published.
>
> This proposal starts were Adam and I did with IMAA (be client-only), but 
> goes even further in making it unobtrusive. Basically, there is an 
> optional map in the headers which tell an MUA how to display mailbox names 
> in headers. Mailbox names remain the same: they just get displayed differently.

I have looked at this draft. I currently fail to see any serious functionality
that this is really adding. We already have display names that can be in
any language/script we want. There are user agents that when they find a
display name, they almost completely isolate the user from the actual address
(MS Outlook Express is the one I know). And display names travel much
closer to the actual address, so the chance that the association gets
lost is clearly lower.

With this proposal, people in China or Japan or India,... will still
have to use ASCII addresses on their business cards, letterheads,...
even for language-internal communication. In that sense, the proposal
provides significantly less functionality even than the IMAA draft.
I can also not see how the 'alternate' (internationalized) addresses
could get used in other places such as URIs/IRIs,...

Although by using base64, code can be reused, the raw base64 means
that for 'middleware' that analyses/filters/... mails, new code
may have to be written.

Security issues should not just mention digital signatures, but
should also say that unless such certificates are checked every
time the email address is used, it can lead to problems because
an email address will look like something but may actually be
something completely different.


Regards,   Martin.