Subject: Re: Is it good to publish a new RFC on SMTP without internationalisation?

From: Dan Oscarsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 09:19:25 +0100 (MET)

>At the risk of stirring up a lot of trouble, I would turn this around and 
suggest that, if one can't figure out how to reliably and consistently send 
email to non-ASCII domains and/or addresses, then
>there is little point in putting non-ASCII characters in the DNS and some other 
solution for internationalization should be sought.   

Well, I think one can. I have written an Internet draft of how DNS
can be updated to include both UTF-8 and compatibility with ASCII only
software. And I think I could write one of how e-mail can be handled
together with my DNS solution.

And yes, I agree that it will take a long time to get internationalisation
using a single standard character set into the protocols. So we will have
to support the ASCII compatibility for a long time.

I also agree with Keith that there will always be trouble with borders between
two formats and that some software will leak the wrong format over the border.
But it is better to live with that than to stand still in the stone age
forever.

   Dan