Re: [idn] Re: 7 bits forever!

[Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>]

> MIME Quoted-Printable was designed to be a work-around-damage
> solution at the time, and was not design to remove the need for
> handling 8-bit data in SMTP.

I'd put this somewhat differently - QP was designed to be deployable
in the near-term without first requiring MTAs, etc. to upgrade.
If MIME had required that all SMTP servers be upgraded before sending
MIME messages, then MIME would have failed.

> So, my only point is that it appears that some work needs to be done
> in the SMTP standards, and beating up on the MIME WG does not compute
> given this observation.

I don't think it would be controversial to write a BCP declaring that 
SMTP MTAs should support transparent relaying of all 8bit non-control
characters in the message body.  Neither would it change much - because
most existing MTAs already provide this.

Putting UTF-8 text in the message header is a different problem entirely.

Keith