Re: [EAI] NFC/NFD (Re: Test - driven schedule (Re: Rechartering))

[Arnt Gulbrandsen <[e-mail]>]

John C Klensin writes:
> --On Friday, July 24, 2009 09:22 +0200 Harald Alvestrand
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> The more dangerous brokenness is the business card data entry 
>> situation, where people enter an address from a business card and 
>> get a "no such mailbox" response, without there being any visual 
>> difference between the two strings.
>>
>>  Requiring normalization at the server (without placing a requirement 
>>  on what one normalizes to) would at least remove this class of 
>>  issue.
>
> Exactly.

I wonder if that's a bit of a fallacy... anyone who expects humans to 
read and reenter 42-69 differently from 42‒69 has a problem. IMO that's 
a perfectly natural mistake, it involves a character often used in 
today's email addresses, and I've never heard anyone use this 
particular example before so I doubt it would be implemented quickly.

Alternative proposal: Extend VRFY to optionally return a fuzzily 
correctified version of an email address. If VRFY is disabled or 
doesn't return an address, correction isn't available for that address. 
I think this is better because it permits the fuzzy fuzziness to be 
invoked when the address is entered into e.g. an address database, 
instead of when a message is transmitted. As a bonus it's 99% 
independent of EAI.

Arnt