Re: Problems of Internationalized Mail Address eXtensions (IMAX)

> >   It doesn't say that it is a bad idea to
> >allow more than one charset.  I agree with that document, let's
> >require the use of UTF-8 in protocols, but allow negotiation of other
> >charsets to smooth transition and deployment.

> You should take this up with Harald Alvestrand, the author of RFC
> 2277. Note that IDN chose not to use UTF-8, and Harald (as chair of
> the IESG) approved it to be on standards track.

I want to point out a very important feature here. While IDN does not use
UTF-8, the contents are algorithmically mappable to UTF-8. That is *very*
different from allowing arbitrary charsets.

There is a huge problem with using arbitrary charsets; they don't
interoperate well. They may not be supported on the recipient platform, or
if supported, even the 'same' charset (such as SJIS) is interpreted in
different ways on different platforms. If the on-the-wire protocol is UTF-8
(or algorithmically mappable to UTF-8) then senders and recipients only need
to deal with one charset.

Mark