Subject: Re: [EAI] draft of the new charter for EAI WG

From: Shawn Steele <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:40:52 +0000

Great, looks fine to me, thanks!

FWIW:  A really minor thing, I'd make the non-ASCII/ASCII info thing broader, eg:
* Advice for multiple addresses for the same mailbox in an EAI environment (Info)

But there's probably enough wiggle room in the original phrasing
 
- Shawn

-----Original Message-----

Dear all,

     The draft of new charter is proposed below. We can finalize the new charter based on the following text.

    This message is sent with permission from co-chairs.

    any comments are welcome.

Yao Jiankang

-------------------------------------------------------

Description of Working Group:

Since early in the effort to internationalize domain names, which resulted in the standards associated with IDNA, it has been understood that internationalization of email address local parts is required. At the same time, email address internationalization poses a series of special problems. Constraints on the interpretation of local-parts by any system other than the final delivery one make address encoding nearly impossible. The need to use addresses in both the email envelope and in header fields, and to do so in ways that are at least compatible, suggests that this is not a simple and isolated problem.

This working group?s previous experimental efforts investigated the use of UTF-8 as a general approach to email internationalization.
That approach is based on the use of an SMTP extension to enable both the use of UTF-8 in envelope address local-parts and optionally in domain-parts and the use of UTF-8 in mail headers -- both in address contexts and wherever encoded-words are permitted today.
Other protocols were similarly extended.

This working group has finished all of its deliverables under the original charter.

Several of the WG?s experimental RFCs based on UTF8SMTP extension have been proven during the experimental phase and now need to be moved to standards track.  Downgrading is a complex issue. This working group will do more research on it, and make a decision about ?downgrade with alt-addr / downgrade with no alt-addr / no downgrade?.  The WG may create either standards track or additional experimental or informational RFCs for downgrading related issues.
Additionally there are some other areas which may require more effort to make the smooth operation of internationalized email address.  

Deliverables

The following deliverables are foreseen in this charter. The 

WG chairs may (re)structure the deliverables into specific 

documents or document sets as needed. Adding or removing documents outside of these deliverables will require a charter

update.

* UTF-8 SMTP extension specification (Standard) 

* Header format specification (Standard)

* UTF-8 POP specification (Standard)

* UTF-8 IMAP specification (Standard)

* Downgrade (Exp or Info)

Going forward, it is possible that the downgrading specification will go into no-downgrade or simple downgrade due to the difficulty of fully specifying all necessary behavior.

Additional possible documents suggested:
* Advice for MUA implementors (Info)

*Advice for EAI deployment (info)

* Advice for non-ASCII and ASCII addresses for the same mailbox (Info)

* Mailinglist(info)

* Mailto(info)

Goals and Milestones:

      Mar 2010  Recharter for standards track

      Apr 2010   Headers & DSN (Standards) to IESG

      Apr 2010   SMTP (Standard) to IESG

      May 2010   IMAP & POP3 (Standard) to IESG

      July 2010   Advice for non-ASCII & ASCII addresses (Info) to IESG

      Aug 2010   Downgrade to IESG

      Sep 2010   Advice for MUA implementors (Info) to IESG

      Sep 2010   Advice for EAI deployment (info) to IESG

      Oct 2010   Mailinglist (info) to IESG

Oct 2010   Mailto(info) to IESG