Non-latin email addresses dangerous? (was: Re: Why are we here? What are our goals?)

At 17:15 04/02/01 +0100, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

>On 1-feb-04, at 9:22, Dave Crocker wrote:

>>We want them to be able to have addresses that are
>>expressed in their native character sets.
>
>This is very dangerous anyone having a non-latin email address can't 
>expect to receive mail from people who don't master this character set. So 
>someone who speeks a non-latin language as well as a latin one, would 
>always have to provide two representations of his/her email address in 
>order to be reachable in both languages.

If you have ever looked at business cards of people in such regions, that's
exactly what they do. Not because they want it that way, but because they
know that their customers appreciate it. The main piece of 'innovation'
that you need in order for this to work with email are some clever ways
of sending MUAs to figure out which sender address to use, so that they
don't use a non-latin one when they send you email. The rest of the
problem is mostly pure mechanics, although before we use it, it has
to be written up.

Regards,    Martin.