Subject: Re: [EAI] Consensus Result on Issue #1 - Parameter on MAIL

From: Shawn Steele <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:59:51 +0000

> Yes it DOES matter. Because the message would then be forwarded ONLY over  
> routes that advertise UTF8SMTPbis, and there might not exist such a route  
> to the intended destination, in which case it would bounce.

I disagree.  If the message could be sent in ASCII and reach the destination, then I have no problem with that message reaching the destination if it happened to be encoded in UTF-8 but only used the lower 7 bits.  In fact, the only way to tell the difference is if someone explicitly included additional information, not in the message itself, that the message was "supposed" to be UTF-8 or ASCII.  Message routing shouldn't be dependent on information that isn't within the message.  

-Shawn