Re: what is the real problem?

On Thursday, November 13, 2003, at 04:05  AM, Martin Duerst wrote:

>> So, given a suitable input device, a user who is skilled in a 
>> language and a writing system for that language should be able to:
>>
>> a. With a high probability of success, correctly transcribe an email 
>> address that uses a person's name and a well-known domain string from 
>> that language and writing system,
>>
>> b. With a high probability of success, correctly transcribe an email 
>> address from that language and writing system that is written or 
>> printed on paper,
>>
>> c. With a high probability of success, correctly transcribe an email 
>> address from sounds spoken over the telephone by another user with 
>> adequate skills in that language, approximately to the extent that 
>> those users could successfully transcribe the same address over the 
>> telephone onto paper
>
> - a. seems to include both b. and c. Is it needed?

I left out part of a.  It was supposed to be "correctly transcribe an 
email address from memory..." (as distinguished from writing on paper 
or spoken sounds)

> - I like your wording for c. It works very well even for not at all
>   phonetic writing systems (e.g. Japanese)

thanks.

> At this point, this may be a detail, but I think that MUAs will develop
> ways to handle the problem of 'which address to use for which 
> recipient(s)'.

I'm not sure that this is sufficient, as it doesn't handle the cases of 
forwarding, mailing lists, etc.  I suspect it makes more sense to have 
senders' MUAs include 1 or more addresses for each sender or recipient 
(including a required "worst case" one in ASCII), and let recipients' 
MUAs decide which address to display to their users.

Keith