Re: Subaddressing

On Saturday 15 February 2003 23:43, John C Klensin wrote:
> --On Saturday, 15 February, 2003 22:55 +0100 Marc Mutz
> <[email protected]> wrote:
<snip>
> > In the light of John's recent mail, I should add that I'm
> > talking about  keeping or not keeping the concept of opaque
> > local-parts /for IMAs/,  iow, whether or not to _extend_ the
> > concept to ILPs.
> >
> > I'm specifically not trying to start a discussion whether or
> > not opaque  local-parts as currently used are a bad idea -
> > they're not. Apologies  if my mail came across like that.
>
> I think we are getting close to figuring out where we agree or
> disagree, which is progress even if we can't agree.

:-)

> When I read the above, my reaction is "MTAs don't read minds".
> You presumably don't intend that they do, so I probably don't
> understand your suggestion.

There are two separate things here:

1. What I left of your quotation of my mails was a disclaimer intended 
to respond to your reply to my mail about MIXER. It was just to say 
that I don't intent to suggest changes to 2821bis this way.

You shouldn't try to read too much into that.

2. The point of the first of the two mails you were replying to was - 
very condensed - :

a. I assert that splitting the ILP[1] avoids the need to change servers, 
thus reducing complexity[2]

b. I understood your point about local-parts being opaque and 
interpretation[3] of the local part to be performed after the ToUnicode 
operation as an argument _against_ splitting[1].

c. I assert that requiring the ToUnicode operation in servers to keep 
current functionality[4] working is needlessly increasing 
implementation complexity[2]

d. As a consequence of a-c, I think that splitting[1] is preferable over 
keeping the local-part opaque[4] w.r.t. IMAA.

[1] at non-alnum US-ASCII characters, and normalizing the delimiter 
chars to their US-ASCII equivalents.
[2] where I assume that increased complexity decreases security and 
scalability.
[3] subaddresses, etc, and I don't want to engage into a hair splitting 
discussion which of the the M*As does actually interpret the local-part 
according to a local convention, either ;-) That's why I talked about 
"servers" (which for me also includes IMAP and whatnot).
[4]  ie. processing it without prior splitting[1]

Marc

-- 
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