Re: [idn] Re: 7 bits forever!

["David Leung \(Neteka Inc.\)" <david@neteka.com>]

> > Why is this important?  Well.. think about this message.  I may have
> > an 8-bit-clean mailer.  You may have one.  But neither of us has the
> > authority to make sure that the software at ietf.org is able to deal.
>
> WRT to your comments in particular, I agree that SMTP has the most
> difficulties. However, as stated, if something cannot be extended it can
> still be replaced. And in the meantime, IDNA should be there as a fallback
> position for these kinds of protocols.
>
> I mean, considering all of the problems that SMTP has -- sender forgeries,
> relay forgeries, lack of end-to-end integrity, and of course a lack of
> support for i18n email addresses -- it seems likely to be a candidate for
> replacement for other reasons anyway. That doesn't mean that the IDN tail
> should wag SMTP, but if SMTP cannot be upgraded, well, add that to the
> list of other things that SMTP doesn't do very well. In this regard, the
> IDN issue is just one of many that need to be considered (i18n mailbox
> names being another).
>
> --
> Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
> Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/
>
I agree that IDNA should be there as transition to protocol like SMTP,
however if IDN is going to be used on other protocols like SMTP, etc...
these protocol has to be changed according to the long-term strategy for
IDN, so we should look at IDN as the root for all the other problems and
solve it first, in terms of using ACE or UTF8 for long-term, then we can
have a clear picture of how to upgrade the other protocols, eg: for SMTP we
can add extra ESMTP syntax that can handles both i18n mailboxs as ACE or
UTF8.

David Leung
Chief Technology Officer
Neteka Inc.
T: (416) 971-4302
http://w!.neteka.com