Re: if you really want utf-8 headers...

At 11:45 04/01/02 -0500, Keith Moore wrote:

>But that's part of why I suggested making this change first at the MUA
>and message store, without burdening mail transport at least initially -
>because the message store is in a good position to convert legacy
>messages to the new format, and because POP or IMAP provide the means to
>allow simplified MUAs to refuse to deal with legacy messages,
>and because it doesn't burden the rest of the mail transport in the near
>term.

I think getting UTF-8 for the message store and for POP and IMAP is
great. But I don't think Paul or John (and the rest of us) are starting
at the wrong end, I just see it as them doing one part of the overall work.
The work on downgrading/upgrading has to be done anyway, and better
only once. And looking at all the pieces has various advantages:

- We make sure that things work together
- We get some increased push on adoption, because people have
   various ways and places to start upgrading. It's often difficult
   to predict in which sequence upgrading will happen; the best thing
   to me seems to have consistent/compatible upgrades available
   across the board.
- We know that adoption won't necessarily be that quick. If we
   think it takes five years or more, we shouldn't start at one
   end and wait for that to be fairly upgraded and then start at
   the other end.
- A simplified MUA is an excellent example of the benefit of streamlining
   to UTF-8. But for that to work, the MUA not only has to be able
   to receive messages with UTF-8 headers, it also has to be able
   to send them. For that, it seems that an SMTP extension is just
   about right.

Regards,    Martin.