Re: [EAI] POP/IMAP authentication?

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

I think what Shawn's getting at, which Alexey and Harald haven't
addressed and which Shawn might not be making clear, isn't so much the
connection between the IMAP login and the email address as it is the
idea of limitations on, say, the user's device.

If I'm migrated to a new email address and if, in the process, I also
get a nifty new non-ASCII login (whether or not it's the same as the
email address... surely we can see that migrating both at the same
time might be a common thing), that may be OK when I'm using my
laptop, where I can enter, say, "лзыба" just fine.  But I might not
have a mobile phone yet that can enter Cyrillic letters (or Thai
characters, or whatever), and then I'd have a hard time logging in
from my mobile.

And I think Shawn's point, which I agree with if I'm getting that
right, is that it wouldn't be a bad thing to point that out and to
suggest that an ASCII version of the login be available for a
transition.  Perhaps some text vaguely like this:

---
When a user's email address is changed, it may be common -- perhaps
desirable -- to change the user's login identification as well.  It's
possible, however, that a user who gets a non-ASCII email address
might still have devices that are unable to enter a non-ASCII login
ID.  It is probably wise, therefore, to continue to accept an ASCII
version of the user's login ID -- perhaps the old one, or perhaps an
alternate ASCII version of the new one -- until the user confirms that
it is no longer necessary.
---

Barry