RE: [idn] IDNs in email message bodies

[Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com>]

At 17.49 -0500 01-03-26, Brian W. Spolarich wrote:
>   Meaning that only when you may have to call the 'doDNSOperation'
>mythical function do you need to worry about the IDN issues.

No, you have to worry about IDN also when using the domainname as 
protocol parameter in the application protocol aswell, which include 
for example when using SMTP. One of the main things in IDNA is that 
the ace is good because the domainname whenever being a domainname 
(i.e. not only when you are to use DNS) is encoded in ascii.

This is one of the differences between IDNA and what Walid have in 
it's patent by the way -- at least when I read the patent -- because 
the patent talk about intercepting just the doDNSOperation and do the 
encoding only in that case.

I claim that is not sufficient, and that is why I wrote the IDNA spec 
the way I did.

The real problem is when a domainname is not really a domainname in a 
protocol sense -- which includes when it is inside the mail body.

And, I really would like to have explicit suggestions for text which 
I can add to the document which clearifies how to handle this case.

   paf