Re: [EAI] Comments on draft-ietf-eai-frmwrk-4952bis-01

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Shawn,


--On Monday, July 12, 2010 06:08 +0000 Shawn Steele
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>> The second sentence is not very clear. Is the following what
>> is meant?
> 
>>    In this case, the client will not be able to transmit any
>>    messages which contain non-ASCII characters in the
>>    local-part of any email addresses. If the non-ASCII
>>    characters are confined only to the domain portion of the
>>    address, such a client will be able to transmit messages
>>    if it uses [RFC3490] or [RFC5890] ToAscii() to encode the
>>    domain portions of these addresses.

I can't even find the above text in 4952bis-01.  To what are you
referring?

> They may have ASCII aliases (eg: transliterations) available,
> so I think that's a tad too restrictive.

And I don't understand this comment.  If an ASCII alias is
substituted for the non-ASCII local part, then the message
proposed to be transmitted no longer contains a non-ASCII local
part.  Either the local-part in the _message the client is going
to transmit_ is all-ASCII or it isn't.  If it isn't, the above
is true.  If it is all-ASCII, the above is irrelevant.  

If you are suggesting that two messages are somehow the same
because one uses ASCII aliases for addresses found in the other,
I think that takes us directly into the mess of having to assert
an externally-verifiable identity binding between the two
addresses.  Only the delivery MTA or the destination user can
know that, and they aren't obligated to tell (even on VRFY).

>    In this case, the client will not be able to transmit any
> messages    which contain non-ASCII characters in the
> local-part of any email    addresses. If the client has an
> ASCII only address available, such    as an alias, or by
> applying [RFC3490bis] ToAscii to the domain    portion of the
> address, then it may be able to send the mail in    ASCII as
> per [RFC2821].

That statement would be true, but a lot less helpful than I
think you want, if the last part of it read something like
"...then it may be able to send a similar, transformed, message
in ASCII as..."

   best,
      john