RE: [idn] Reality Check

[Erik Nordmark <Erik.Nordmark@eng.sun.com>]

Russ,

> 2. Before the Internet became the default carrier for E-mail, many
>    companies had some internal system that allowed electron mail.
>    With these E-mail packages people could send e-mail to some=20
>    people but not to all the people they wanted.  As the internet
>    became more accesses able to companies, people began to=20
>    request the ability to send to others out side of their systems.
>    A lot of these companies had to install whole new systems in order
>    to accommodate this request.  And while doing so, a lot of us had
>    to live with two or more E-mail systems to do our work until every
>    thing was right.
> 
>    I see no difference in this analogy then what we are trying to do
>    with the introduction of an IDN standard.  With the introduction
>    of a UTF-8 based IDN, those who wish to use it will upgrade
>    to the applications and systems that can handle it.  While in
>    the process of upgrading, people may not be able to communicate=20
>    with everyone they want to via the new feature, but if it is
>    important enough, these people will use both IDN and non-IDN
>    address until every they need to communicate can, but because
>    it is important all parties will upgrade there systems ASAP.

You omit one important issue - the possibility that upgrading the software
makes it impossible (or harder) to communicate with those that haven't
upgraded.

For instance, if as part of upgrading the user ends up changing their email
address to be an IDN email address, then the user might no longer be
able to communcate with peers that don't support IDN.

One way to avoid this is to define an ACE encoding to be used in that case.
Another would be for the user to have two different email address - one
IDN and one following current email address syntax.
In the latter case the user and/or the applications need to be able to
pick which sender email address to use in a given case.

  Erik