Re: a few short notes

Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:

>
> Paul Robinson writes:
>
>> On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 01:40:41PM +0100, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:
>>
>>>  It's what 822 uses.
>>
>>
>> And we're having this discussion because we know 822 to be flawed. 
>> Therefore, your point is irrelevant.
>
>
> I beg to differ.
>
> 1. Even if 822's choice of charset were flawed, we still need 
> interoperation during the (probably very long) transition from 822 to 
> Mail-NG. It must be possible to write gateways. 

If the new default were something like UTF-8, it would be easy as it is 
a superset
of ASCII so all existing 822 address are still valid.

The transition back could to 822 format could be as simple as using
the HTTP %<hex> values that we all see in URLs now. A %<hex>
value is just as easy for me to read out loud as a non English name
mugged into ASCII.

MUAs will catch up quickly once adopted.

>
> 2. While 822 is flawed in many ways, I don't see what would be gained 
> by (picking an example at random) using Cyrillic characters in the 
> message-id production I see on page 23 of RFC 2822. Latin seems just 
> as good and just as bad as Cyrillic there. 

Message-id is not the same as email address.  I would agree.

> Unicode is a special character repertoire, because it includes all the 
> characters that are used today. Open a newspaper, any newspaper: The 
> characters you see are in Unicode, or in the pipeline.
>
> US-ASCII is special because of the need for interoperation/gatewaying 
> with 822.
>
> Off-hand, I don't see any other special character repertoires.
>
> Arnt


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