Re: [precis] spaces in usernames

Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> Mon, 05 March 2012 17:12 UTC

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Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2012 10:12:36 -0700
From: Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im>
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Subject: Re: [precis] spaces in usernames
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On 3/5/12 10:02 AM, Alexey Melnikov wrote:
> On 03/03/2012 08:10, Alan DeKok wrote:
>> Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>>> Alexey and I are working on an I-D to replace SASLprep (RFC 4013). One
>>> issue we found is that, in RFC 4013, spaces were allowed in usernames. I
>>> know the framework document now allows spaces in passphrases, but I'm
>>> wondering if we also want to allow spaces in usernames. Something to
>>> discuss in Paris, perhaps...
>>    In a theoretical sense, yes.
>>
>>    Practically, usernames are largely email addresses.  And I've rarely
>> seen spaces used in practice.
> Spaces are allowed in email addresses, if quoted. Of course no sane
> person would pick an email address with spaces on the left hand side (as
> this is unlikely to work in many places), but at least SMTP allows for
> that.
> (And then there are email addresses used for gatewaying from other
> systems like X.400. Such email addresses can also contain spaces)

It's rather unlikely that X.400 will be made Unicode-aware, right? ;-)

> I would be happy with discouraging spaces in usernames, but I don't
> think we can just prohibit them.

I tend to agree.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/