Re: [I18ndir] HTML, email addresses, etc

["Martin J. Dürst" <[e-mail]>]

On 11/06/2020 06:18, Nico Williams wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 11:46:31PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
>> Hi.
>>
>> The following comments by John Levine and myself might be
>> relevant to people on this list.
>>
>> https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/4562#issuecomment-640070477
> 
> I'm not sure that we need a new input type for EAI addresses.  If the
> user types in non-ASCII, then presumably *they* know that the domain can
> handle EAI.

They know that the receiving domain can handle EAI. But before the mail 
is received, it actually has to be sent. That happens from an MTA 
associated (in some way) with the Web page where the the user types in 
the address.

> Another way to put it is that if we did add a new input type, should
> developers build websites where the user must pick whether to enter an
> EAI or not?

No. The distinction doesn't apply to a single Web site.
[Except for your point about browser differences and for cases where a 
Web site has different parts where mail gets routed differently. E.g. 
imagine a trading web site that sends mails to sellers via mail system A 
and mail to buyers via mail system B.]

But it applies to the Web as a whole. Most current web sites send their 
mail via an MTA that is not (yet) set up for EAI. And many users may 
have both an ASCII-only and an EAI email address. It helps a lot if 
users get told by the browser that the Web site they are on (more 
specifically, the associated outgoing MTA) can't handle their EAI address.

> Or should developers just always use the new input type?
> 
> (Answer to the second question: No! First the page must detect whether
> the browser supports the new input type!)
> 
> If we add a new input type, then after a while that will be all that is
> used.  Ergo it's not needed.
> 
> The mere fact that the user typed in an internationalized mailbox name
> is all the evidence we need that it is likely that the domain supports
> EAI.
> 
> You could say that because *your* system doesn't support EAI for
> outbound email, you won't accept it as input.  _This_ could be a new
> option on the input.

That's exactly what this option is about.

Regards,   Martin.