For many years email address have been 8-bit. With the 8th bit set to zero. The problem is mostly the MUAs not able to display those addresses and users not being able to read them when they are a language not known to the user.
If the format of email changes then conforming MUAs must comply with what ever the headers-ng look like. So the MUA is not going to be the problem in mail-ng as we can assume that 100% of all existing MUA can not already handle the mail-ng format.
Currently if I get email that is non-english, I have configured my email filter (procmail) to throw it in the trash anyway as I can not read it even if my MUA displays it correctly.
If email addresses were non-8-bit-ASCII and in a language that the user could not read, then the user would start associating something else with that user - their name or some other identifier.
And do we all really need to be able to read a persons email address when we can not already converse with that person because of language? If I ever learn Spanish then I might care if I knew how to pronounce an email addrsses that had some ~ glyphs above a letter or two. I can still copy/paste it into my address book.
Doug Royer | http://INET-Consulting.com
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