Re: [EAI] UTF-8 in Message-IDs

"John Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> Mon, 15 August 2011 17:51 UTC

Return-Path: <johnl@iecc.com>
X-Original-To: ima@ietfa.amsl.com
Delivered-To: ima@ietfa.amsl.com
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5B73421F8C41 for <ima@ietfa.amsl.com>; Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:51:51 -0700 (PDT)
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at amsl.com
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam-Score: -111.123
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-111.123 tagged_above=-999 required=5 tests=[AWL=-0.076, BAYES_00=-2.599, HABEAS_ACCREDITED_SOI=-4.3, RCVD_IN_BSP_TRUSTED=-4.3, SARE_SUB_ENC_UTF8=0.152, USER_IN_WHITELIST=-100]
Received: from mail.ietf.org ([12.22.58.30]) by localhost (ietfa.amsl.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id tN6GFiP2aeaQ for <ima@ietfa.amsl.com>; Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:51:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from leila.iecc.com (leila6.iecc.com [IPv6:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:4c:6569:6c61]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A506221F8C40 for <ima@ietf.org>; Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:51:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 13444 invoked from network); 15 Aug 2011 17:52:36 -0000
Received: from gal.iecc.com (64.57.183.53) by mail2.iecc.com with SMTP; 15 Aug 2011 17:52:36 -0000
Received: (qmail 88810 invoked from network); 15 Aug 2011 17:52:36 -0000
Received: from leila.iecc.com (64.57.183.34) by mail1.iecc.com with QMQP; 15 Aug 2011 17:52:36 -0000
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:52:14 -0000
Message-ID: <20110815175214.4833.qmail@joyce.lan>
From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
To: ima@ietf.org
In-Reply-To: <C31E821E731AC23ED7EE191F@PST.JCK.COM>
Organization:
X-Headerized: yes
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [EAI] UTF-8 in Message-IDs
X-BeenThere: ima@ietf.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.12
Precedence: list
List-Id: "EAI \(Email Address Internationalization\)" <ima.ietf.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/options/ima>, <mailto:ima-request@ietf.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ima>
List-Post: <mailto:ima@ietf.org>
List-Help: <mailto:ima-request@ietf.org?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ima>, <mailto:ima-request@ietf.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:51:55 -0000

>Now there is a problem.  An automatically-generated In-reply-to
>header field, generated as recommended in 5322 (unchanged in
>5335bis) is going to contain that non-ASCII Message-ID.  That
>requires EAI handling (i.e., the UTF8SMTPbis extension) for the
>outgoing message even though the In-reply-to field is the only
>header field containing non-ASCII characters.  Given the
>scenario above, that makes the message non-deliverable to my
>intended new recipient. ...

If I may try to peek inside the can while trying to keep the worms
from escaping, I think many of us have an informal mental model of a
poorly specified downgrade process at submission time, since that's
the point at which it's more likely that software will have access to
address books with alternate addresses and so forth.  With that in
mind, it would be nice to have an ASCII message-id to make the poorly
specified process easier.  But I don't think we should go there,
except perhaps in an entirely separate document that makes it as clear
as possible that it's not part of the normal EAI transmission process.

I find the most compelling argument the one that there'll be UTF-8 in
message-ID's no matter what we say, so let's not specify something
that we expect implementors to get wrong.

R's,
John