Re: Open Issue: Splitting of local-part into labels and where?

On Thursday 13 February 2003 20:34, Martin Duerst wrote:
<snip>
> I see some argument
> for making '.' a delimiter, because that would make it easier
> to apply the same function to a whole email address as to
> a domain name only.

We will not be able to use the same function for the LHS as for the RHS 
anyway. That's simply b/c there are characters that are allowed in 
local-parts, but not in domains (the definition of quoted-string with 
that of dot-atom in rfc 2822).

<snip>
> If we treat all non-alphanum ASCII characters special, then what
> about non-alphabetic/syllabic/ideographic symbols,... in other
> scripts? Shouldn't they also be treated as special separators?
<snip>

No, b/c they were never used as separators (since they can't appear in 
local-parts, obviously).

OTOH, dot, plus, etc _are_ used as separators currently. And since 
no-one here can tell what separators are used in the wild (e.g. b/c the 
subaddress separator is config'able), it's only logical to split at 
non-alphanum ASCII characters. It also makes the ACE-ILP more readable 
for those that have to deal with it (users of non-imaa compliant MUAs, 
MTA admins).

We should, of course, exclude pathological cases, such as control 
characters, so a quick lookup in a charset table reveals the following 
candidates:

HT CRLF SP (whitespace)
! " # $ % & ' ( ) * +, - . / : ; < = > ? @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~

all of which are currently allowed in quoted-string and thus in 
local-part.

(Note: Only splitting at dots would e.g. mean that we mangle whitespace! 
I don't think that that's what we want, esp. b/c CRLF is a "multi-byte 
character", so to speak)

Marc

-- 
It has become fashionable in the post Cold War world to label
opponents as terrorists [...]. By doing so, the authorities instill
within society a culture of fear, leading people to accept that their
rights (and the rights of others) be trampled on for the sake of the
common good. In other words, it justifies the loss of privacy and a
state of surveillance they would otherwise not accept. Both communism
and fascism were examples of this technique used to perfection.
                  -- John Horvath: The Internet: A Terrorist Network?
                     Telepolis 2001/08/22 (#9350)

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