Re: comments on the SMTP session protocol

[Greg Vaudreuil <gvaudre@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Folks 

Let me state some of the basic assumptions I have about this effort.
Hopefull I can start to get a framework from which a solution may
emerge.

1) SMTP should be modified to allow for 8 bit character sets.  Not
having an 8 bit path is a flaw in the origional RCC 821 specification
that I do not want to see remain, especially when it is so easy to
correct. To make this work, some mechanism must be defined to allow
mailers to detect other mailers capable of handling 8 bits.  This most
simply can be by defining a synonym for HELO, recognized only by
mailers that are 8 bit compliant.  Other options are playing with the
DATA command, but that wastes several exchanges before recognizing
that the receiving mailer cannot accept the message as encoded.

2) Given that there are 7 bit systems that need to interoperate with 8
bit systems, I proposed a single standard encoding be adopted.  If you
are a 8 bit system, and you want to send to a 7 bit, line limited
system, then uuencode, or somesuch, but allow the UA to retrieve the
origional 8 bit message without trying to figure out n different
formats.  If a standard format is adopted, I can, without updating my
mailer or reader, put in a script to detect non-ascii text and convert
it before my mail-reader looks at it.  If my mail-reader can't deal
with the 8 bit data, I have not lost anything, I just fail to get
aditional functionality.

3) Provisions needs to me made to 822 to allow for easy interoperation
of multimedia mail.  I don't care whether it is RFC1154 based or
RFC934 based, or whatever.  It would be useful to be able to use
currently defined OSI body parts, including G3 FAX, and ISO8859/1.  To
the extent that this requires binary transmission capabilities, I
would like to see the elimination of line length in RFC 821.  This
concern is secondary to allowing 8 bit transmission... and I'm not
advocating unlimited line lengths for 7 bit systems.

I understand that line lengths are harder to modify than striping
bits.  It this is seen as a difficult change, that a good alternative
needs to be proposed.  I do not like the idea of uuencoding, or
hexifying (?) everything when a 8 bit path is available! 

Greg Vaudreuil