Re: Problems of Internationalized Mail Address eXtensions (IMAX)

Hi Dan,

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Kohn" <[email protected]>
> Because most MTAs don't support IMAX, and so every IMAX-capable MUA and
> MTA would always have to be downgrading to IMAA (or have to bounce the
> message), in which case no value has been added, but a lot of addition
> work has been done.  Since there will always be some non-IMAX capable
> MTAs and MUAs, IMAA will always have to be around, so everyone of those
> IMAX MUAs and MTAs will still need to implement punycode.  Or they can
> bounce the message, which is what Paul was referring to as a
> non-starter.

That was true from the very proposition of ESMTP.  And ESMTP was designed so
that features could be added as such.

> If you want to go forward with IMAX, you may even succeed in getting it
> published as Experimental, though I doubt it.  But no one will implement
> it, since it adds lots of effort but no value over IMAA, so why bother?

This is not a fair statement.  We have implemented the IMAX extension as an
experiment already! :-)
Of course, its because we devised it... But discussion with other peer
vendors indicate that there is interest in this direction.  I think
Experimental is interesting.  Perhaps we should pursue that...  I think
vendors would be interested to add the feature and we can argue till the end
of time and we wont know if we dont publish it.

Your thoughts?

Edmon